And do you think if Steve had made this offer and Christian had accepted it, would we have even heard a second of this recording?
It was not Steve on the call, it was an unnamed Reddit employee. Christian makes this clear in his post.
The misinterpretation came from the ‘quieting down’ expression, which referred to the API usage (I think quite obviously).
instead of your thought experiment, I'd request you just pose your impartial take on the most charitable view for Steve and explain why in that view it was a reasonable act of good leadership for him to make these comments. Otherwise I don't think we're really talking about the same thing.
You've quoted the transcript elsewhere for people to "decide for themselves" and I'm not sure how you could be convinced we all did in fact read it and already did, and just don't agree with you.
There's a common error where, because one believes they have been aggressed upon, they can behave as if they actually have been aggrieved without actually examining realistic positions of actual evidence. I've seen this sort of thing happen in a variety of circumstances. Whether or not the Apollo developer intended to threaten or not doesn't actually change the behavior of the person who took whatever was said as a threat, and acting in a reconciliatory manner when one feels threatened is actually a very reasonable thing to do.
In the least charitable possible interpretation for Christian, he made an implicit threat that he would continue to raise community clamor if not bought out, then backtracked it as soon as he was asked about it, both parties shared an apology for a misunderstanding neither believed was really a misunderstanding, and then Steve made public statements of the original interpreted threat only, with that editorialized paraphrase. In responding to that statement, Christian announced his app would close in 22 days, so it sounds like he can't be doing much with Reddit's community by then regardless.
I don't see the point in either of these situations for Steve to have said what he did, and he must have been aware of how this call could be interpreted in transcript and did it anyway. If I was hearing about this as a disagreement between business partners retold in a bar conversation, I might give reddit's team the same benefit of the doubt as you. In this case, it doesn't seem to matter much. The question remains WTF was spez thinking even making those comments.