No. It's a big political statement to include political messaging and plead to political figures when you shut down. Then to praise those political figures afterwards is additional political messaging.

No, many users are sharing the theory that the downtime was to allow meta or google to take over the backend. Content delivery is different on the app now. For example, ads being served during videos not between videos.

There was no deadline, the app stores didn’t need to remove it.

The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.