Exclusive: Fox News’ Bill Hemmer to Conduct First Interview With Stranded Astronauts Since Return to Earth
Fox News
Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer will conduct the first interview with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams since their return from the International Space Station (ISS) after nine months in space on Monday.
Hemmer will conduct the interview from the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and, according to a release obtained from Fox News, will “discuss what it was like to be in space for over 280 days, the efforts to bring them back to Earth, personal reflections on what it was like to be the focus of a global news story and the future of space exploration.”
Wilmore and Williams finally made their return to Earth last week after spending roughly nine months aboard the ISS. While the two astronauts were originally scheduled to spend just eight days in the space station, their return to Earth was substantially delayed after a Boeing space capsule malfunctioned.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX facilitated the return of the two astronauts, ferrying them back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
In February, during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Wilmore and Williams denied President Donald Trump’s claim that they had been “abandoned” by former President Joe Biden and said they didn’t “feel stranded” on the Space Station.
“We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded,” said Wilmore, who has reportedly had a “rough” time readjusting to gravity on Earth. “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.”
The booking of the astronauts’ first interview is a notable one for Hemmer, whose Fox News show is beating the broadcast completion in ratings so far in the first quarter. Fox said in a statement that “America’s Newsroom is the top-rated show in its timeslot averaging 2.3 million viewers year-to-date, which outpaces broadcast daytime programs including NBC’s Today Show Third Hour (2 million viewers) and Jenna & Friends (1.3 million viewers) head to head as well as CBS Mornings (2 million viewers), ABC’s GMA3 (1.4 million viewers), and NBC News Daily (1.3 million viewers).”
