All that is talked about there is moving the mission that was completed today forward by a few months. The issue with that is that the other astronauts who returned to day, including the Russian, were scheduled to at the ISS until this month, which is why the didn't come back sooner. It is also worth noting that their return mission was actually delayed by SpaceX, due to issues with the mission to bring the Crew 10 astronauts to the ISS; not only was Musk not capable of bringing them home earlier, like he told Trump he'd do, it was delayed.
Again, for the two astronauts to come how sooner, there would have had to be an additional launch to the ISS, to replace the capsule brought back by the two astronauts. But Musk doesn't mention that part or who would have paid for that additional launch; I highly suspect he wanted the US government to pay for the extra mission -- money that wasn't in the NASA budget.
Two last things. First, the article in the OP has been updated to include comments from a press conference today and quote Astronaut Whitmore as saying that he believes Musk, that Musk did offer to bring them home sooner and the article gives the impression that Whitmore believed it was about politics. However,
Whitmore said just the opposite, "From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all."
Which brings up my next issue with the article, the idea that somehow having them return later was uncalled for and a risk to the astronauts lives. But to go back to the political comment, the full quote by Whitmore is, "From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That's what we do in human space flight. That's what your nation's human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."
This idea that this was some type of "criminal action" to not bring the astronauts home sooner is simply a lie. The fact is, this was always the contingency plan, both Astronauts Whitmore and Williams knew this was what would happen even before they went, if there was an issue with the Starliner (and, given Starliner's history, they probably expected this result).
And, as I just showed above, there was no "rescue mission." The plan was always that they would return to Earth with the Crew 9 astronauts, when Crew 9 was being replaced by Crew 10, as Whitmore confirmed. That Musk, now months later, says he could have got them sooner but gives no details doesn't change the facts. Again, was he expecting Crew 9 to come back 6 months early -- not fair to them or to the Crew 10 astronauts. Or did Musk plan on sending an entirely new mission up just for the two astronauts -- and if Biden had approved that, what would you have stated about spending 100 million to 150 million (the cost of a single SpaceX Crew Dragon flight to the ISS) to bring two astronauts back six months sooner?
Again, there was no "rescue," instead, the mission plans were followed. They went up on Starliner and, due to issues, they could not return. As such, the mission plan was that they'd stay roughly 9 months on the ISS until the next "crew change" and go back to Earth with the returning ISS crew. As the above quote shows, that was the plan, they knew it before they went up, and it wasn't an issue for them.
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