NASA astronauts tell of space odyssey and reject claims of neglect

I think there's a bit of "both sides" in this because NASA definitely wants to message about the situation in ways net beneficial to them, and professional Austronauts also adhere to pretty strict PR guidelines. And so they should.

But the invective from "the other side" of this story has a more loosy-goosy view of what can be said, uses loaded words which make NASA PR people wince. "stuck" and "rescue" are very emotive ways of talking about a situation which probably has 99% common ground to facts.

"they refused our help" is another key phrase I've seen (or variants of it) which is again, emotive. NASA had a plan. It wasn't the plan SpaceX wanted, but not wanting the same plan isn't a refusal in the sense meant.

It seems like the obvious reason they weren’t rescued earlier was the cost to taxpayers was unnecessary when the astronauts were relatively safe waiting, but if that were the case why wasn’t NASA more transparent with their rationale? It leaves room for doubt that it was at least in part politically motivated.