I find that explanation very strange.
I don't find Morton's reason strange at all. "Pace" is code for "overwork". Most people want lives.
It's becoming evident that Tesla has a bad workplace culture, sometimes verging on toxic. The demands for 80-hour work weeks are well known. The rather arbitrary and unreasonable demands from Musk are also well known. The thing is, sane people don't actually want to devote their lives to the company while getting yelled at -- and if they can afford to not do that, they won't.
The resignation of the HR director, without comment, is substantially more worrisome because we already *know* Tesla has HR problems, and frankly Morton's departure is... in some sense an HR problem. Did Toledano decide that she didn't have Musk's backing to actually solve the HR problems?
"Public attention" is code for "OMG, there's a crazy smear campaign against the company every day, even if Musk does something totally innocuous, and he's acting kind of erratic right now -- I don't want to be anywhere near that".
Morton emphasizes that the financials are fine. His message means what it says, and it *does* point to a problem for Tesla, and one we already know about. Musk needs to understand that people, including him but especially other people, need lives outside work.