Why on earth is Donald Trump so obsessed with Russia while being so woefully misinformed? Why does he constantly lie about, well, everything?

I think we know the answer to the second question. He's a pathologically-lying narcissist, or he's auditioning for a role as a person with that abnormal psychology. Now the Russia stuff? He's been awfully deferential for a few years now. Between Manafort and Trump's dealings with Russia, and his effusive praise for Vladimir, combined with a refusal to reveal his income tax returns, people are talking. That would be the mother of all euphemisms.

Buzzfeed unearthed a Fox News interview with Trump and Eric Bolling from April, 2014, The Fox 'News' folks thought he'd be a great person to ask how to revive the economy, of course, with four bankruptcies and all. The subject pivoted to Russia, which it usually does, and he said this. H/T Buzzfeed:

Well, he’s done an amazing job of taking the mantle. And he’s taken it away from the president and you look at what he’s doing. And so smart. When you see the riots in a country because they’re hurting the Russians, okay, ‘We’ll go and take it over.’ And he really goes step by step by step, and you have to give him a lot of credit.

Interestingly, I own the Miss Universe pageant. We just left Moscow. He could not have been nicer. He was so nice and so everything. But you have to give him credit, that what he’s doing for that country in terms of their world prestige is very strong.

Bolling asked him who he thought was the better president, Putin or Obama. He said Putin, it's not even a contest. 'Putin has played him (PBO) like a fiddle.'

We have to surmise he may have dementia because he said on Sunday that

[Putin]'s not going to go into Ukraine. Just so you understand, he's not going to go into Ukraine." he insisted

If it's not dementia, maybe he's extremely dim-witted? Maybe he forgets about that newfangled video taping, and the easy accessibility of that technology? Maybe they own him so wholly and completely he's doing everything in his power not to piss off Putin and his autocratic tyrannical oligarchs? Who knows?

If none of those aforementioned theories are true, then he has to be intentionally sabotaging his own campaign. This is too strange for my imagination.