There's also a long list of government (or subpeonable) entities on your certificate trust list.

Without which TLS is not gonna work.

The article is arguing that in practice you could just send your "encrypted" communications to the browser vendor, or one of the governments on the certificate root list, or someone else in the distribution chain, and have them be the middle man. The security properties of your communications would be the same. Hence "snake oil".

Things like stapling don't change this much, or reduce to TOFU.