More like people know where to hype, whom to avoid criticising unless measured etc. I have rarely seen him criticising Elon's vision only approach and that made me skeptical.
I personally dont believe he is trying to profit off the hype. I believe he is an individual who wants to believe he is a genius and his word is gospel.
Being picked by Elon perhaps amplified that too.
Unfortunately my understanding is that he originated the vision-only approach while at Tesla. As in, he's the one who sold Musk on the idea in the first place.
I don't have time to dig up the citation that someone pointed me towards, but it's out there and can be found. Which is a bummer, because I've learned a lot from his videos and writing and have a lot of respect for his work.