Well you went from one of the easiest to one of the more complicated distros so thats not surprising. There’s a lot of distros thst are just as simple to install as mint, you don’t need to mess around with arch and gentoo unless you’re planning on becoming a real Linux enthusiast.
Hes never been a particularly great public speaker IMO and he did seem to struggle more than he normally does. Whenever he got angry was when he performed his best