I suspect a good part of it is that he knows and knew all along, but he made his money this way, and now his thought process is (rightly or wrongly) that if he

I suspect a good part of it is that he knows and knew all along, but he made his money this way, and now his thought process is (rightly or wrongly) that if he acts like he sincerely believed it, then it's less evil to have said what he said because he was 'mistaken' and not a piece of shit.