I think that's more a case of unnecessary pedantry. Rust "has garbage collection" in that you can opt in to the lifetime of some objects being handled by some kind of garbage collection. Rust doesn't "have garbage collection" in that Rust does not require a GC'd runtime to implement its semantics in a memory-safe manner. Two different concepts with similar terminology.
Edit: Also looking at that commenter's history I am rather skeptical they would reasonably be considered a "Rust evangelist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43555249#43592602
I wonder what they'll add to it by tomorrow...