OMG: Astronauts REFUSE to talk to Trump in AWKWARD call from space

0:00 Dear God, you have not seen awkward until you've watched this phone call between Donald Trump and the Artemis 2 crew. >> So proud to be a part of this program. >> Well, I have to say I spoke to a very special person, Wayne Gretzky, who I think you know, the great one, and I spoke to your prime minister and many other friends I have in Canada. They are so proud of you, and you have a lot of courage. I'm not sure if they'd want to do that. I'm not even sure if the great one would want to do that to be honest with you. But you have a lot of courage doing what you're doing. A lot of bravery and a lot of a lot of genius. But they're very very proud of you.

1:40 Administrator Alexman, just get a quick com check. Make sure you guys are still on the line and we didn't have a handover. >> I am. Yes, I am. >> And >> just brutal. That's almost a full minute of silence after Trump's usual inane ramblings where these astronauts can't even bring themselves to dignify what Trump is saying by responding. And so they just sit there and wait for it to end. And look, I'm lucky enough to say that I've sat with two presidents now. It's not exactly something that you just sit quietly and hope passes you by. There was uh a moment during my interview with President Biden back in 2022 that I've never spoken about publicly, but I got 15 minutes for the interview, which I used all of. And then after the interview, he spoke with me

2:27 off camera for another 15 minutes, which was really special. And in the moment, I knew it was special. And there was a point at which one of Biden's staffers made eye contact with me while I was speaking with the president and motioned a little like got to wrap it up sign. And out loud, I told that staffer in front of the president, if you think I'm going to be the one to end this conversation, you're out of your mind. And everybody laughed because like, if you have an audience with the president of the United States, generally you want to use it, which underscores just how unusual it is that these astronauts have an audience with the president and yet they sit there in silence. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's not because they don't have something to say. It's not because they don't like speaking, but rather it's probably got just a little bit more to do with the

3:13 fact of who they're speaking to. And look, is it a surprise? Like, these are people who have dedicated their entire lives to science. They've worked their asses off. They're brilliant. They're competent. They're quite literally everything Trump is not. You can't fake being smart enough to manage in space the same way Donald Trump has faked everything that he's ever done. He's a con man. He's a fraud, a liar, a cheat. There is nothing redeeming about him. He speaks on topics he knows nothing about. He pretends to be an expert when he's not on everything. He and these astronauts have quite literally nothing in common. Also, think about what Trump is actually saying here. He's directing his comments at the one Canadian crew member, Jeremy Hansen, saying that he spoke to the Canadian Prime Minister.

3:58 But we also all watched what Donald Trump has been saying to and about the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, for years. We all watch what Donald Trump has said about Canada for years. The problem with Trump's constant attacks on everyone and everything is that he's lost the goodwill of everybody he set his sights on. So, no, Trump doesn't get to just namerop Mark Carney and pretend like it's all good. Mark Carney hates Trump. Canada hates Trump, and for good reason. So, it's especially dense of Donald Trump to think that he gets to invoke the name of anything having to do with Canada when he has surrendered the ability to do so in good faith. All of which is sad, by the way, because this should be a unifying moment for not just Americans, not just North America, but the world. And yet, thanks almost

4:46 unilaterally to Donald Trump, the world has never been more divided. Canada is boycotting American goods. NATO is at risk of collapsing. Autocrats the world over now have a supporter and a protector in the president of the United States. The Middle East is embroiled in yet another major war. American soldiers are yet again in the Middle East dying, more than a dozen of them. And frankly, democracy right here in the United States is on its last leg. And all of it, everything I just listed is the direct result of this president and his party. He is a bucket of cold water on everything good, decent, and joyous. It's also worth noting that Donald Trump already proposed a 23% uh cut for NASA along with a raft of other cuts

5:32 including cutting the EPA budget by half, cutting $10.5 billion for housing, cutting $8.5 billion for K through2 programs, cancelling 15 billion for clean energy, $2.5 billion for clean drinking water, eliminating 1.5 billion for youth job training, three and a half billion from the labor department, 395 million for senior employment, 775 million in food assistance grants. And the list goes on and on. And it's all to raise the defense budget from 875 billion to 1.5 trillion. That's right. Every domestic program, including NASA, that Donald Trump could get his hands on would be cut. All so that he could drop more bombs in the Middle East. And so he'll talk to these astronauts as as if he's some champion for space exploration

6:19 when their own budget is going to get gutted because the no new wars president can't stop dropping bombs. But I want to end this on a positive note aside from everybody's collective disdain for this president, which I happen to think is a net positive. And that is this moment right here where the Aremis 2 crew had the opportunity to name some new spots on the moon. And what followed was a moment that will go down in the history books. So, I'll leave you with this as a reminder that while Donald Trump and Republicans have destroyed so much of our collective faith in humanity, it only takes a moment like this to restore it. >> Thank you, Houston. We have a couple more things uh we'd like to take this moment for. Um, our science team uh helped us out with a couple of relatively fresh craters on the moon that have not been

7:05 previously named. And our crew would like to propose a couple of potential names for those items or those areas. And we spent a bit of time uh this morning looking out the window and we're able to see them now both with our naked eye and through the long lens. And so we feel this is a good time to uh send this down. And then a spe special shout out to Kelsey for helping us uh with this. The first one uh we'd like to suggest is a named crater in honor of our great spacecraft integrity. And so if you were to look at oriental on the far side and then draw a line straight up tom on the far side relatively in the middle is an unnamed crater and we would like to suggest it be called integrity in the

7:51 future. My second >> and the second one and especially meaningful for this crew is a number of years ago we started this journey and our close-knit astronaut family and we lost a loved one and there's a there's a feature in a really neat place on the moon and it is on the near side far side boundary. In fact, it's just on the near side of that boundary. And so at certain times of the uh moon's transit around Earth, you can we will be able to see this from Earth. And so we lost a loved one. Her name was Carol, the spouse of Reed, the mother of Katie and Ellie.

8:40 And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko and it's just to the northwest of that at the same latitude as M. And it's a it's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carol. And you spell that C A R R O L L. Before you go, I'm very excited to announce that I've written a new book titled The Day After: How to Wield Power in a PostTrump World. The book explores what is, in my opinion, the single most important theme that we're dealing with in politics today and moving forward. Power. Specifically, how Republicans abuse it and how Democrats refuse to wield it. This book explains how we got here and more importantly, how we should

9:26 finally wield power if we're lucky enough to get it back. It is the blueprint for progressives who want to do far more than just restore the status quo. Please pre-order today by following the link on this screen. You can grab yours from any of the major retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or scroll down on the page and get a copy from an independent bookstore closest to you. Thanks so much for supporting Independent Media.