Boeing isn't in a learning phase... more of a how much can we underpay our employees and how many cheap subtractors can we get away with phase. Also starliner would not be "nominally" second best, but truly second, or perhaps third best if other options come around(dreamchaser).

Musk may be huffing the right wing nonsense too much, but I don't know if he has actually done anything anti-american(though supporting someone as obviously corrupt as Trump could be considered so I suppose), much of the headlines about him appear to be clickbait nonsense.

SpaceX can't do jack shit without Gov approval, so it wouldn't really matter if they had ulterior motives.