==He thought people who interpreted punctuated equilibrium as conflicting with Darwin were liars or idiots.
That’s because he was Chicken. Nowhere in Darwin’s theory of evolution do you find anything remotely resembling Punctuated Equilibrium.
Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms. Falconer has given a striking instance of a similar fact, in an existing crocodile associated with many strange and lost mammals and reptiles in the sub-Himalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula differs but little from the living species of this genus; whereas most of the other Silurian Molluscs and all the Crustaceans have changed greatly. The productions of the land seem to change at a quicker rate than those of the sea, of which a striking instance has lately been observed in Switzerland. There is some reason to believe that organisms, considered high in the scale of nature, change more quickly than those that are low: though there are exceptions to this rule. The amount of organic change, as Pictet has remarked, does not strictly correspond with the succession of our geological formations; so that between each two consecutive formations, the forms of life have seldom changed in exactly the same degree.
I would appreciate a follow-up on this, considering it took me about thirty seconds to locate a section of Origin of Species that flatly contradicts the whole premise of your posting this thread.
Darwin clearly understood varying rates of change, and recognized that there are living species that have changed little over millions of years.