Also consider his insistence that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama's, when the photos clearly showed that wasn't the case. It's a completely meaningless lie. He doesn't accomplish anything if people were to accept it as truth, and it was quite obviously at odd with reality, and yet he just kept going on about it.
That's not a strategic lie, that's a pathological lie. That's someone who simply cannot tell the truth.
No matter how much I consider Trump a dimwit liar, I can't completely shake off the other explanation, that of yesmen telling him whatever they thought he would like to hear. I suspect that in a position like that, even making up falsehoods is conveniently delegated. You don't lie, you just select convenient sources to parrot. Putin must have spent recent years in an even worse yesmen-bubble, the shift from him being considered dangerously competent to him being considered dangerously senile should really not come as surprising as it does.
That's not a strategic lie, that's a pathological lie. That's someone who simply cannot tell the truth.