Former Astronaut on Fox News Blasts ‘The Five’ Over False Claim: ‘That Is Not True’
Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly called out Fox News during a live appearance on the network, Tuesday after Greg Gutfeld blamed former President Joe Biden for the two astronauts who were left on the International Space Station for nine months after their space capsule malfunctioned.
Asked by Fox News host Bret Baier about the landing of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were only supposed to be in space for just eight days, Kelly said:
Bret, before I talk about that, let me say something. I was watching your previous program, The Five, and they’re talking about abandoned– they were stranded by President Biden. That is not true. They have had a spacecraft up there since September that was going to bring them home. They have always had a ride home and the decision to keep them up there had nothing to do with politics, it was just the fact that you need crew members to operate the space station and they were the two that were there, and you had to send up a vehicle with two empty seats, so the safest thing to do was to just leave them there. But they weren’t stranded. They always had a ride home.
He continued, “Now, they were only supposed to be there for eight days, so to answer your question, yeah, it’s mentally challenging to go on a mission where you think it might be eight days, you know it could be longer because it’s the first flight of a vehicle and sometimes there are problems, and NASA made the right choice to keep them up there longer, and that could be tough mentally.”
Kelly concluded, “But I’ve known Butch and Suni before any of us were astronauts and they’re very experienced Naval aviators, test pilots, and even though it might have been a challenge, I’m sure they rose to the occasion just like any astronauts would do, if not all. But, at the same time, I’m pretty sure they are really happy to be home.”
During The Five on Tuesday, co-host Greg Gutfeld referred to Wilmore and Williams as “the two stranded astronauts Joe Biden left in space.”
Last month, during an interview with CNN, Wilmore and Williams pushed back against President Donald Trump for blaming their extended stay in space on Biden.
“We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore protested. “I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human spaceflight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those. So if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’ That’s what we prefer.”
Watch above via Fox News.
