Unfortunately, "candor and telling it honestly" is frequently code for "I want to be hostile toward people I don't like, but I don't want to experience social consequences for it", so there's a lot of noise in the interpretation of this space.
Linus has since apologized for his words and actions against people, worked to correct them, and has been maintaining a pretty good track record so far. Your generalization falls short of reality unfortunately. It is possible to use candor and "tell it like it is" without degrading people, which is exactly what you see here.
I'm not sure what 'evidence' would be satisfying to you for something like this, but maybe something about the man himself will help you understand what he means?