I don’t have any expertise with which to answer your question definitively, but I wanted to chime in to say that my first thought was exactly this: “hands that are gripped together are unable to present a threat to you, so it is a signal of voluntary vulnerability.”

And rather than vulnerability, it might be more accurate to say that it represents submission, which would tie in with your second question, so it’s not so much that one is signaling that one is not a threat to the god(s), but that one submits.

And in that context, it’s likely noteworthy that the most common example of clasped hands outside of prayer is when one is earnestly begging something of someone else, and especially a favor or a certain inconvenience.

So my only question really is whether these people are deliberate agents provocateur who are now feebly trying to hide the fact that they were working for the benefit of Trump all along or if they’re blithering idiots who are genuinely so fucking stupid that they didn’t see this coming

I see no third option - it’s one or the other