Exactly. My impression is he was happy to be the one going out and showing the police all of the places he knew Gus wasn't when they were still looking for a lost child. And that was his first excuse, and as long as Gus was never found out there in that vast expanse, who was to say any different? But then they launched such an extensive search that it strains all credibility that that's what happened. No scent trail found by the dogs, no trail found by the trackers, no sign of anything he had on him (hat, shoes), no glimpse of his blue shirt sticking out like a sore thumb amidst all of the dusty Outback colors in all of the aerial imaging they did, not in the water, not in the abandoned mineshafts, nothing found. And a preschooler doesn't pack the supplies needed to survive long enough to hike out of the search radius and doesn't drive himself off in a vehicle,
So if Gus emphatically didn't wander off, Tranpa needs a new story and it's mostly down to either him or some third party abductor (unless you count the Roc/Thunderbird/Pouakai/UFO swooping in and carrying him miles off theory), so he'd better start claiming he really believed it must have been an abductor from the beginning and throw in accusations of the cops being incompetent bigots for good measure. Try to smear their credibility and get enough gullible 'allies' stirred up that the cops' every move becomes fraught. Because they're just picking on poor Josie for being trans, you know, no other reason, and now the blame is shifted to them from Tranpa because if they'd only listened and believed trans voices then maybe Gus would have been found instead of wasting all of that time, money, and manpower searching for a child that Tranpa always knew must have been abducted (even though, again, he's never made an appeal to the hypothetical abductor, he told the public to butt out, he chased off/assaulted reporters who could have helped get the word out, and the first photo wasn't released for weeks). He's highly motivated to try to make the case to blame someone, anyone, else because otherwise he's to blame. And doing this interview was a way of trying to reestablish the control over the narrative that he lost when the police stopped believing he was genuinely trying to help.
And even without knowing the background of how he acted at the beginning of the disappearance and seeing the disparity with what he's claiming now, Tranpa just immediately shows himself to be full of shit in this interview. The relationship gets framed as 'close,' that Gus was 'the apple of his grandparents' eyes,' while tranpa can tell you that his grandson loved books but can't tell you if he could fucking read. His grandson who lived with him. He actually doesn't mention anything they did together, and the things he does describe Gus as enjoying sound a lot like it's from the perspective of someone who was annoyed with him at the time that he was 'making a mess' (spreading out his piles of books on the floor) and 'being noisy' (banging the car door). Meaning it sounds like Gus wasn't coming to Tranpa with those books he loved and asking him to read them with him or to show off a new skill he was learning. Which I take to mean Gus wasn't comfortable with him, didn't want to spend time with him. I wonder why, and relatedly I wonder how they were 'close' when it apparently wasn't spending time together doing the shit that Gus loved doing.
Seriously, imagine the indifference this exposes. You see your firstborn grandchild with books all the time. You never even cared enough to ask if he's reading yet? Not even when being 'bookish' is a point you supposedly have in common with him that you could use to connect with him? Even clinical narcissists would usually take more of an interest in that (bragging rights over a child being smart and accomplished PLUS being able to claim he takes after you? Catnip). But no. The thing that seems to evoke the most fondness, the most interest from tranpa, is his grandson's hair.
