He is a popular public figure who gets sent crank work claiming to have solved NP=/=P several times a week. His context for saying that is a little different than here where the author is critiquing someone for creating what is essentially a short survey of several papers alongside his commentary. The original author isn't claiming to have proved anything, and even is asking for feedback and public contribution to his survey. It hardly struck me as cranklike.

That said, Tao is a good example of why gate-keeping is so dumb. If Tao wrote an article surveying and commentating on the current state of covid-19 epidemiological research as someone with no experience in the field, I'd trust it. I'd actually probably be more likely to trust it than any random credentialed epidemiologist doing the same work.