I believe you're talking about the Steam Link. Which if you had ethernet running everywhere worked pretty good.
The old Steam Machine branding was more a set of guidelines / branded manufacturer specs for mini-PCs. Not many actually came out and yeah it got shut down pretty quickly. Though it was the origin of Steam OS / Big Picture Mode and what became Proton.
That's true, but I also think there is a stark difference between a low quality 'off the record' recording and standing at the official podium taking questions from vetted journalists to a live feed on every news network.
Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention has known he is, at best, an odious man-child for years. But a lot of people actively try to avoid paying attention because they've been trained that it's "just politics" instead of the infrastructure that impacts every aspect of their lives.