Monday, during an interview with FNC’s “America’s Newsroom,” astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams discussed their return to Earth last Tuesday off the Florida coast in a SpaceX Dragon capsule and who was to blame for stranding them in space.
While the two did not outright condemn former President Joe Biden’s administration for being stuck, they said they had no reason to doubt President Donald Trump and SpaceX head Elon Musk’s claims.
“What would you like to say to President Trump and Elon Musk?” host Bill Hemmer asked.
“I respect you,” Wilmore replied. “I trust you. You’ve given me no reason not to trust you, either one of them. What they say, I can’t say what they say. I haven’t lived that. But I have no reason not to believe anything they say because they’ve earned my trust. And for that, I am grateful that our national leaders actually are coming in and taking part in our human spaceflight program which we see is hugely important global significance and they take an active role and based on the past and what we see now with them doing that it’s refreshing – not just refreshing – it’s empowering. It’s strengthening for our nation I think it’s a good thing for our nation when the national leaders especially something that’s high visibility are involved in the process and I’m grateful for that.”
“I’m just glad that they’re involved and they take notice,” Williams added. “And, our situation, I think I mentioned before, maybe wasn’t the perfect situation, but allowed a lot of people, including the President and Elon, to look at what’s going on on the International Space Station, take it very seriously and understand that our involvement as a country, as a spacefaring nation, is really important throughout the world. And it sets an example and it shows — you know, our ability to be able to do the hard things, put people in space, operate in space work in space and then bring us back. It’s important and I appreciate that them and many, many, many more people took notice of it.”
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