You can make excuses for him if that feels good. But take a look at his track record... how many webinars, conference talks, private corporate trainings, etc. were about everybody's a designer? He even based his model of UX Maturity on it.

You don't have to pretend he meant something different or better. We know what he meant. We don't know how much money he made off it. But it was pretty clear for the years that was his song.