Donald Trump hosted the crew of the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission at the White House on Wednesday. The four astronauts – commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – joined the president in the Oval Office for a celebratory meeting and press conference.
“We’re very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable a lot of other things too,” Trump said at the start of the conference, immediately segueing into praise for himself. “To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have had no trouble making it, I’m physically very, very good. Maybe a little bit of a problem. We’ll have to try it.”
The crew broke Apollo 13’s distance record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth during their mission earlier this month. They reached 252,756 miles (406,771km), surpassing the 1970 record of 248,655 miles. The mission ended off the coast of San Diego on 10 April as the Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made a textbook splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after its 10-day lunar odyssey.
Trump previously congratulated Nasa on the successful mission, writing on Truth Social how proud he was of the “great and very talented” crew while making no mention of his desire to impose severe cuts to the agency. Earlier this month, Trump announced his intention to slash Nasa’s budget by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives.
Discussion quickly moved to the Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday effectively gutting a major section of the Voting Rights Act. Trump claimed he was unaware of the ruling until a reporter asked about it. When another journalist confirmed that the ruling was a “win for Republicans”, the president celebrated. The court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines. “I love it, this is very good,” Trump said enthusiastically. “We can end this news conference right now. I want to read it.”
When the conference turned to current wars, Trump said the US was still in talks with Iran, but no longer face-to-face. He appeared to mix up Iran and Ukraine when asked which war would end first, saying: “I think Ukraine, militarily, they’re defeated,” adding incorrect claims about Ukrainian military losses. Trump also said his administration would release as much information as possible on UFOs in the near future.
