That is true, but at some point it's hard to distinguish between parts of the FAA and parts of Boeing, owed to the simple fact that Boeing have so much influence over the FAA. Statements about how Boeing more or less "certified itself" speak to this. Just go and look at the LinkedIn history of the folks that move between Boeing/FAA.

If you accept this, then the question might turn to how it was possible for the FAA to be weakened to such a degree that this corporate influence was possible. FAA are the regulator - at the end of the day, safety lies with them. Perhaps it's the responsibility of committee and congressional oversight to the aviation regulator? Perhaps the buck stops with the government representatives who have allowed this mess to be possible in the first place?

How is the FAA culpable? No American planes crashed? The FAA doesn’t control regulations for Indonesia do they? Indonesian maintenance standards are atrocious. Look at Lion Air’s record. Is it a coincidence that one of the world’s worst airlines also happen to crash the 737 and yet Southwest Airlines that flew an order of magnitude more flights on the Max never had even a scratch? Lion Air knew they had a problem on the penultimate flight — but they ignored it. The FAA would never allow that level of negligence in the US: that plane would have been grounded. The FAA has a better safety record than anyone else — and that includes the Europeans.

Doesn't matter. The design itself was unsafe. The reason the FAA has historically been so highly regarded is that it has fostered a design environment of generally implicit design safety.

Ironically, however, Europe has called the FAA to task before on several models of Boeing aircraft that weren't implicitly design safe. See the D.P. Davies Interview w.r.t the Boeing 727 certification process.

They cut corners, and did not inform pilots of the inherent risk that existed in a manner concomitant with the severity of the result. This originated in a desire to submit an aerodynamically deviant aircraft, yet attain type airworthyness certification with minimal friction.

Lion Air may be last in safely operating aircraft, but the design standards were generally written in such a way where even the worst operators stood a good chance of going up, and getting back down free of harm.

Obviously, that is no longer the case.

The FAA let Boeing do the certification of its own plane. The system is broken.