This is ridiculous. This is clearly a manager trying his best to soften the blow to his team after they were just fired by talking up their work and impact.
For example, if someone were cut from a sports team and the coach went and talked about how good that person was, and how hard they worked. Well it raises the obvious question, if they were so good and did work so hard, why did they get cut? And why does everyone get so upset when people ask the obvious question?