cppfront simplifies C++ a lot by introducing unifying syntax (that compiles to ordinary C++ -- same semantics in the end)
https://github.com/hsutter/cppfront
Herb Sutter always tries to sell cppfront in a different way, due to his position at WG21.
It would be rather odd if the chairman of WG21 would also be proposing a C++ replacement.
Yes, knowing underlying levels of abstraction may be useful e.g., godbolt.org is excellent, knowing CPU caches, pipelines, branch prediction, out-of-order execution may be essential for getting orders of magnitude improvement in performance.
It doesn't mean the abstraction itself is useless.
Also plenty of languages compile to native code via C or C++ generation, Eiffel, Nim and some Scheme compilers being the most notorious ones.
However the WG21 chairman can't in a political correct way, assert that like Objective-C and C++ did to C, cppfront if successful will trail its own path, effectively being yet another C++ replacement language.