Sure. I am lying. With every sentence I write.
Why are you being facetious?
You made the claim that John Mueller, in the above article, is paralleling Mathew Cutts' Tweet from 2012. This is wrong.
Mueller made it clear that
there’s no secret (or public) SEO-bonus for having your keywords in the domain name, he said it verbatim. He further brings up the example with web-design.com and sabertoothed-hedgehog.com ranking the same for web-design, leaving no room for speculation.
The 2012 Tweet, by Cutts, you're referring to says this:
Minor weather report: small update upcoming. Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results.
This is admittedly vague, and off that alone I'd agree with your speculation that it was more of a tune-down than a turning-off. But again, that's speculation, because it's not clear from the Tweet alone what was actually done.
On top of that, this was over 10 years ago, so aside from being vague, the information is no longer particularly relevant because Google's Search Engine algorithm has gone through a slew of updates since.
Mueller's statement, on the other hand, is recent, unambiguous, and it makes perfect sense for a Search Engine.
I understand why you, and some other domainers may not like it, but it's important to separate feelings from facts when giving financial- or business related advice.