He said he read it several times. Either he is a liar or he is an idiot.
The larger pic IMO is Trump starting to triangulate for the general election. It probably also shows closer to where he is on the SC dial: more conservative than Roberts, but less conservative than Scalia. Some debate as to whether Thomas is less conservative than Scalia, but that’s probably not as relevant as pointing him somewhere less than 9 out of 9 on the SC conservatism scale. Sounds to me like he’s probably about an Alito, but he still needs to play to the base, so he has said Thomas.