Actually, it was. The last version of Python2 was 2010 released, with only bugfix-versions coming after this. And EOL for those bugfix-versions was also set at the time of the statement, and actually even twice, as the date was pushed back by some years.

Everyone at that time knew that Python2 is dead and that everything is in transition to python3. Most new code was written for python3 and not even compatible for python2 anymore. So it really was just one guy deciding to maintain his own fort on his own.