President Donald Trump announced plans to welcome rescued U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the Oval Office once they “get better.” During a Tuesday interview with Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, Trump expressed his intention to host the astronauts at the White House.
“Number one, they have to get better,” Trump said. “You know, when you’re up there and you have no pull in your muscle, you have no gravity, you can lift 1,000 pounds like this. They have to get, they have to get better. It’s going to be a little bit tough for them. It’s not easy. They were up there a long time, and when they do, they’ll come to the Oval Office.”
Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, returned to Earth on Tuesday, splashing down off the Gulf Coast of Florida near Tallahassee just before 6 p.m. ET. The astronauts had spent 286 days in space, having originally arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Also aboard the mission were a Russian cosmonaut and the American commander of the Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Trump have criticized former President Joe Biden for the extended duration the astronauts spent in space. “They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk said last month. Trump echoed similar sentiments, claiming, “He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space … He didn’t want the publicity.”
