I have auditory processing issues, and until I saw that scene with captions, I thought he was saying “I’ve got better” - as if he meant he could come up with a better lie, but choose not to.
And not, you know, that he got better from being a newt.
Because the people submitting to him know the whole deal. I'd say the requestor was trying to go for an easy setup of having the main character "trash lady" deleted as the joke.
Or it could even be all fabricated and there's no "requestor" at all.