I think it's more that he wants us to be impressed
> that he has the money to go buy a power tool,
No Michael, he wants us to be impressed that he has the money toss away a perfectly good power tool. That Dremel will clean anything in this Universe. The only 'problem' is that it requires a bit of patience. I've used a Dremel for years for all sorts of stuff. It's low torque, but high speed. Johns need instant gratification because of his mental problems, thus should never use power tools of almost any design.
This particular one seems to have an auto-protective feature that shuts of power when the RPM drops. That's a good idea, because otherwise one needs to continually listen to the motor and shut off the power or lighten the load when the RPM drops.
Or maybe what he meant is that when he impatiently bogged the motor by pressing too hard, he did not notice the 60 Hz noise caused by the spot welding of the brush contacts with the brushes within the motor.
Actually, that and over-current in the windings won't take long to make the device trash-worthy.