By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-03-21 19:36:17 | Updated at 2025-03-22 03:44:48
8 hours ago
President Trump promised Friday to personally cover overtime pay for astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore after they were stranded in space for 286 days — spanning both the 47th president and former President Joe Biden’s terms.
“If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket,” Trump, 78, told Fox News’ Peter Doocy when asked about the astronauts who were trapped at the International Space Station since June 2024.
Doocy pointed out that NASA had agreed to cover just $5 per day in incidentals for the cosmic crew, amounting to roughly $1,430 in possible back pay.
“Nobody ever mentioned this to me,” the president responded, apparently surprised. “Is that all? That’s not a lot, for what they had to go through.”
A NASA spokesman previously told The New York Times in a statement that the agency’s astronauts are “on official travel orders as federal employees,” effectively categorizing their extended stay as a business trip.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched a rescue mission that arrived Friday at the space station.
The SpaceX crew then brought Williams and Wilmore back to Earth, where their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of America off Tallahassee, Fla. Tuesday — and was greeted by dolphins.
Trump reflected Friday on “what they had to go through” while floating above Earth’s atmosphere — after he and Musk both dinged Biden for leaving them up there too long.
“Even though they’re in the capsule up there, the body starts to deteriorate after nine or 10 months and gets really bad after 14,15 months, with the bones and the blood and all of the things that you’ve been reporting on very well,” the president went on.
“And if we don’t have Elon, they could be up there a long time,” he said, musing “who else?” would have been willing to move so quickly to complete the rescue mission.
Last month, Musk blamed “political reasons” for the pair being abandoned in space.
“He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space … He didn’t want the publicity,” Trump also claimed of Biden earlier this month.
In September, SpaceX launched a Crew Dragon capsule to rescue the pair. That craft docked briefly at the space station, but NASA chose to delay the astronauts return.
NASA four months later said the two astronauts would have to wait for another SpaceX rescue vehicle loaded with replacement scientists.
