Good political move, but that doesn't preclude it from being a smart move - as far as I've read so far, the conditions (weather, airline quality, etc) make this completely unexpected. Is implausible to believe that the FAA may be leaned on to suppress news that may damage Boeing, especially with the current administration, and the current slate of news coming out of Canada's shenanigans with the SNC?
The FAA doesn't operate on altruism. They were quite happy to take money from and do work for Southwest during Trump's last shutdown. And regarding the MAX, the FAA happily buried any mention of MCAS (while the Brazilian authorities wisely thought it was significant enough to document in the differences training).
