Am I misunderstanding this?

Note that all the following notes are based on reading the community's posts around the situation, I'm not closely following GGG so I might as well be wrong.

Now that Chris has left GGG, 2 lead game developers are left:

Jonathan, who has talked very negatively about PoE 1's features on the recent stream with Zizaran, and it seems that his preference and vision is what PoE 2 is becoming and he's trying to move away from PoE 1.

Then there's Mark, which seems to enjoy PoE 1 and would like to keep developing it like we want.

Why is Jonathan the one who is in charge of assigning people to work on the games? It's quite obvious that he doesn't want to work on the game which he has criticized multiple times, hence the pull of everyone working on PoE 1 towards PoE 2.

Can't there be someone with no preference for either game to call the shots about who gets to work on which game? It seems kinda unfair for a person that seems to have a bias against PoE 1 to be in charge of these decisions.

Obviously I might not be getting the entire picture, so what's the reason for Jonathan being in charge of these decisions?

I don't know if there's anyone left at GGG that really cares about PoE1, and that is just sad.

The way Jonathan is talking about PoE1 is even more sad, and with this guy at the wheel, it's hard to see them delivering on the promises of "supporting both games". He CLEARLY doesn't want to keep supporting PoE1, but he isn't going to say it directly, because he still want PoE1 players' money.

If 3.26 ever comes out, I can't really imagine it being good. To create something good, there needs to be put some effort and heart into it, and I can't really see a single sign that points to them wanting to do that.

My understanding was that Jonathon was put in charge of POE2 and Mark was put in charge of POE1, and that they were being developed mostly separately with some overlap of ideas and knowledge.

However, as POE2 encounters problems they draw from the POE1 staff to focus on POE2 and as there is a lot of focus on POE2 currently, so the POE1 are staff are working on POE2. In the interview it looked to me like Mark is very heavily involved in working on POE2 currently.

To the rest of your question, I think Jonathon has basically taken over Chris's role, and would have more say than Mark. Not sure what their official titles are, but that is my understanding, even if Mark has control over POE1. Also, clearly POE2 is taking priority over POE1, even if it was said that they will be developed simultaneously. From what I have seen from Mark, he has a very good knowledge of the game mechanics and I am not surprised if they want him helping with POE2 directly while the game development is running into challenges.

I may be wrong about some of this, but that is my understanding of what is going on.

I agree with you that it is a bit strange if Jonathon is talking about POE1 disparagingly. It is one of the greatest games every made, still is and has been highly successful. There are things that can be improved, which is what they want from POE2, but they made a great game, no reason to talk it down. It is what has made the company and it has been the best game in the genre for a long time in my opinion. They will be doing very well if they can improve upon it, but it is the current bench mark.