He’s being a dick but there’s a truth to what he says. You have a bunch of people who are probably PHB only weirdos or some shit that (I’m not trying to be rude here honestly) suck at the game in terms of making strong characters who want “only RAW” and then you have one guy that knows somewhat what he’s doing. PAM in the long run is suboptimal. Also he’s a fucking cleric at level 1. The DM went into this assuming RAW = party balance or something and honestly the best choice here isn’t to kick the better player. Not because he made a single ok choice instead of exclusively shit choices but because that group will never scale to him and no matter what he does he’ll never not overshadow then unless he intentionally plays like a moron. It’s just a lack of table fit that not his fault. The DM here should have been able to figure this out and it shouldn’t have gotten to this.