President Donald Trump hosted the astronauts of Artemis II at the White House on Wednesday, just weeks after the crew members circled the moon in a generational voyage.
Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen joined Trump in the Oval Office before members of the press in the afternoon.
“We have some people that have captivated the attention of the whole world, not just our country, the whole world, and they’re very brave, and that was a lot of rocket under them,” Trump said. “I never saw anything like that.”
“I don’t know how they do it. I wouldn’t want to do it. But it takes people like this to make our country great,” he added, emphasizing that everyone he knows “wanted to see the launch and they especially wanted to see a successful landing.”
Trump jokingly asked NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman if “a president is allowed to go up in one of the missions.”
“We can get working on that, Mr. President,” the NASA chief quipped.
The presser lasted 22 minutes, and White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr posted on X that no members of the media asked the crew questions.
“Four American heroes are standing behind the President and reporters haven’t asked them a single question about their HISTORIC mission,” he wrote in a post on X. “Truly shameful.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung also blasted the media.
One reporter did tell the astronauts, “It’s a great honor to meet all of you,” and welcomed them to the White House. He also noted that he interviewed the last man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, and asked, “Is that what you would like to do, and Mr. President, do you think that will happen during your second term?”
It is unclear if the reporter was directing the first part of his question to the president or the astronauts.
“Well, we have a shot at it,” Trump said. “I mean, we don’t like to say definitely, because then you’ll say, Oh, we failed… I think we could say we’re ahead of schedule.”
Another reporter asked Trump for an update on releasing the UFO files.
“It’s been in the minds of people for a long time… They want to find out about the UFOs and anything having to do with UFO or related material,” he said. “And we’re going to be releasing a lot of things… that we have, and I think some of it’s going to be very interesting to people.”
“I’ve interviewed people, my first term, primarily, but I interviewed some pilots, very solid people, and they said they saw things that you wouldn’t believe,” he added.
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