He is also throwing the public off the scent. Trump (or his associates) may or may not have secretly colluded with a foreign power's cyberattack on U.S. democracy, but he quite openly collaborated with it. First he called for it. Then he denied it, disparaged it, and distracted from it. Then he sacked the FBI director in part for investigating it. In other words, he engaged in a cover-up. Not the secret, Nixonian kind, however. Trump has invented something new, a cover-up conducted in full public view.