I think you might be choosing to be overly positive here. There is most certainly more possibilities than "the news is factually incorrect" such as realizing that the Steem community is not happy about being transplanted from their blockchain to Tron.

Justin might have thought he could just move everyone over and might be rethinking his tactics, of course, with the result ending the same.

In multiple areas Justin has made it abundantly clear that he intends to convert the Steem holders over to Tron with a new token that will consume STEEM and replace its role. Then he also intends to airdrop that token to Tron holders as well. This is bad news for many projects on Steem, especially the small ones, and its really bad for decentralization. Justin controls Tron more than StInc controlled Steem.