I think Debian is close to new user friendly IF they pick Gnome or KDE with all the default stuff there, and has getting closer with non-free firmware enabled by default now, but still isn’t quite there as a plug and play new user friendly distro. Things like flatpak w/flathub or snap out of the box isn’t there, and it’d be hard to get a full Debian setup without using the command line (especially for a non free software zelot who wants Spotify and discord out of the box)

Something like mint is just a tad easier, and that might be the different between an easy install and an unexpected set of hiccups that a new user might struggle with. The mint installer is also a lot more intuitive, at the cost of being less universally compatible (a big goal of Debian).