President Donald Trump botched a softball question about the space race during a friendly sit-down with Fox Business.
After congratulating Trump on the Artemis II mission, host Maria Bartiromo asked the president what he thought about the astronauts who circled the moon last week, and whether he expected the U.S. would beat China in the race back to the moon.
Instead of giving Bartiromo the rousing, straight-forward answer she was likely hoping for, the president went on a bizarre tangent about shuttered NASA facilities and submarines.
After conceding that the Artemis crew—who endured an awkward call with Trump after their historic lunar flyby—were “great,” the president took credit credit for the Artemis program, which actually began more than a decade ago under President Barack Obama.
“I’m the one that started that program,” he bragged to Bartiromo. “NASA was closed. It was totally closed. There was grass growing on the runways. And I said, ‘You know what, this is terrible. Let’s start it up.’ And we started it up and it gave great pride.”
The Artemis lunar exploration program began in 2012 with the original name of “Exploration Mission 1.”
Reached for comment by the Daily Beast, the White House pointed to the Artemis Accords, which Trump signed in 2020. The agreement affirmed the Outer Space Treaty and provides a common set of principles for its 60-plus signatories to explore and use outer space for peaceful purposes.
In 2022, when Joe Biden was president, the Artemis I mission launched, sending an unmanned Orion spacecraft to the moon.
A year later, Biden’s NASA administration announced the Artemis II crew with a press release describing how the 10-day Artemis II test flight would pave the way for future long-term human exploration to the Moon and eventually Mars.
NASA astronauts Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California, on Friday, after setting the record for the farthest human spaceflight.
Trump told Bartiromo that everyone he knew watched the Artemis II take-off and landing.
“It gives us pride, and something very good will come out of it,” he said, before adding that space exploration is also “very helpful” from a military standpoint, prompting Bartiromo to ask again whether the U.S. would beat China to the Moon.
“The fact is, we’re way ahead in space. We’re way ahead in the military,” he replied. “We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest military in the world. Nobody makes equipment like us, whether it’s the Patriot or the Tomahawk. We have the best military equipment anywhere in the world. And, uh, we’re gonna keep it that way.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
