Quote character on command line

I want to insert the following line after the current line:
abc "def" ghi

This command works (each quote is escaped):
:put ='abc \"def\" ghi'

These commands also work (no escaping):
:let line = 'abc "def" ghi'
:put =line

But this command fails (the first quote starts a comment):
:put ='abc "def" ghi'

Why does :let not require escaping, but :put does?

The above is simplified from the original which uses :argdo
to put the text into multiple files.

John

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