He's a lot closer to the larger geopolitical game being played. In the world that us techies live in, a government-controlled backdoor is an irredeemable assault on our civil liberties, not to mention useless at the actual task of national security. In his, a backdoor that US agencies can access would be an insanely useful espionage tool against Russia and China, and he has to, as a patriot, believe in our law enforcement personnel and trust them to not abuse their power.
Lines in the sand have been drawn. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Apple is hell-bent on giving the world real, honest-to-god security. It's never existed before. Every technology so far had failure points that state-level actors could find and exploit.
Encryption technology represents a brave new world where anybody can move and hide information outside the reach of governmental authority. The stakes are incredibly high here.