I don't think GP meant "it's completely made up", I think he meant the distinction doesn't matter most of the time.

I.e. most of the time the typing in real C++ code isn't meaningfully stronger than that found in C code.

More complex != stronger. A weak type system would imply that the type systems forgives type mismatches. C had this before it imported prototypes from C++ where you could call a function without declaring it first and if you got it wrong you got some error or crash. The only part where I think C++'s type system is meaningfully stronger than C are enumeration types.