NASA Astronauts Deny Trump’s Claim Biden Abandoned Them In Plea To Anderson Cooper: ‘Help Us Change The Narrative’
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore pushed back against President Donald Trump’s claims that former President Joe Biden left them “stranded” aboard the International Space Station (ISS), pleading with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper to help them “change the narrative.”
The pair addressed the question raised by Cooper during a call to the ISS on Thursday night, to which Wilmore replied:
We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. 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.
His comments come after Elon Musk amplified the claim that Biden left the two astronauts “high and dry,” posting on X that Trump had personally asked him to “bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station.” Trump himself took to Truth Social to accuse Biden of “virtually abandoning” Williams and Wilmore in orbit.
NASA, however, has never characterized their situation in such terms. The pair originally launched in June 2024 as part of Boeing’s troubled Starliner test flight, which experienced propulsion malfunctions and gas leaks. As a result, NASA determined Starliner was not safe for their return, integrating them into regular crew rotations instead.
Williams, who has since taken over as ISS commander and broken the record for the highest total spacewalking time by a woman astronaut, echoed Wilmore’s sentiment.
“Butch and I knew this was a test flight,” she said. “We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner), and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise.”
NASA had originally planned to bring Williams and Wilmore back with SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, but scheduling delays pushed their return to Crew-10, which is now set for March 12. The space agency has not linked these adjustments to any directive from Trump.
Watch above via CNN.
