Trump Ripped by Critics for NASA Ceremony Speech: ‘What the F*ck Is He Talking About?’
Jacquelyn Martin/AP photo
President Donald Trump set off a firestorm online from critics Friday after injecting partisan politics into a speech at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Trump was there to honor the four astronauts who flew NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon last spring. During the ceremony, he awarded NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor for spaceflight. Trump also used the event to announce plans for a new U.S. Space Academy to train future Space Force members, engineers, and civilian spaceflight personnel.
After independent journalist Aaron Rupar noted that the president was “more than an hour late” to the proceedings, despite still posting on Truth Social, commentator Joanne Carducci, known for her popular social media presence “JoJoFromJerz,” wrote on X, “This is about his thin-skinned ego. Making incredibly accomplished people wait for him makes him feel ‘powerful,’ when it’s really just pathetic.”
Seth Abramson, a bestselling Trump biographer, added, “What is this even supposed to be??? What the f*ck is he talking about???”
Here, Abramson was referring to a particularly peculiar moment during the ceremony. Citing his “uncle who was a great scientist” and “loved space,” Trump claimed, “I guess we have genetically, we sort of, I believe in that stuff.”
Read a sample of more reactions to that anecdote below:
Not to mention, as Rupar pointed out, “Trump [was] speaking to complete silence at the NASA center. Not a single person [was] applauding or reacting to anything he [said] during his brazenly partisan speech.”
Read a sample of more general reactions below, including Rep. Ted Lieu’s (D-CA) blunt response to the president asking that a lunar crater be named after him, just as the Artemis II crew named one for Wiseman’s late wife:
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