I think they also told him to make it forgiving, like html, so that beginners could use it. Thus the implicit conversion rules, optional semicolons, being able to leave new off a function constructor, not having to use var, and so forth.
Linters have been around for over a decade and solve all of these issues (as they do in other languages as well). They're also easily integrated in every text editor and build system I've ever seen.
And why shouldn't the interpreter support these rules? Because a linter can do this almost as easily, and not break backward compatibility.
That didn't stop people from wanting to come up with or use different languages in place of C, where possible.