Donald Trump hosted the crew of the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission at the White House on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The four astronauts \u2013 commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen \u2013 joined the president in the Oval Office for a celebratory meeting and press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable a lot of other things too,\u201d Trump said at the start of the conference, immediately segueing into praise for himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have had no trouble making it, I\u2019m physically very, very good. Maybe a little bit of a problem. We\u2019ll have to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew broke Apollo 13\u2019s distance record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth during their mission earlier this month. They reached 252,756 miles (406,771km), surpassing the 1970 record of 248,655 miles.<\/p>\n
The mission ended off the coast of San Diego on 10 April as the Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made a textbook splashdown<\/a> in the Pacific Ocean after its 10-day lunar odyssey.<\/p>\n Trump previously congratulated Nasa on the successful mission, writing on Truth Social<\/a> how proud he was of the \u201cgreat and very talented\u201d crew while making no mention of his desire to impose severe cuts<\/a> to the agency. Earlier this month, Trump announced his intention to slash Nasa\u2019s budget<\/a> by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives.<\/p>\n Discussion did not stay on the astronauts and their accomplishments for very long, quickly moving to a discussion about the supreme court\u2019s decision from earlier today effectively gutting a major section<\/a> of the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n Trump claimed that he was unaware of today\u2019s ruling until the moment a reporter asked about it. When another journalist confirmed that the ruling was a \u201cwin for Republicans\u201d, the president celebrated.<\/p>\n The court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines. Section 2 specifically has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting, and was the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting.<\/p>\n \u201cI love it, this is very good,\u201d Trump said enthusiastically. \u201cWe can end this news conference right now. I want to read it.\u201d<\/p>\n He then advised that some states should redraw their maps due to the ruling. \u201cI know the concept of the ruling, I just haven\u2019t seen the result,\u201d he said. \u201cGenerally, I would think that they would want to do it. Some are greatly helped, and some, it didn\u2019t make much difference.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that the states \u201chave time to do it\u201d ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n When the conference turned to the topic of current wars, the president said that the US was still in talks with Iran, though no longer will these discussions be face-to-face. \u201cWe\u2019re not flying any more, with 18-hour flights every time we want to see a piece of paper. We\u2019re doing it telephonically, and it\u2019s very nice. I make a call, or I have my people make a call, and you know the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked by a reporter whether the war on Iran<\/a> or Ukraine<\/a> would end first, Trump appeared to mix up the two countries, saying: \u201cI think Ukraine, militarily, they\u2019re defeated,\u201d adding: \u201cThey had 159 ships<\/a>. Every ship is underwater \u2026 Every one of their planes has been shot down or has been decimated. They have missiles, about 82% are gone, and they have drones, and most of them are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump also said that that his \u2060administration \u200bwould \u200bbe releasing as much \u200binformation \u200bas possible on \u200cUFOs \u2060in the near \u200bfuture, saying he thinks \u201csome of it\u2019s going to be very interesting to people\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump hosted the crew of the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission at the White House on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-404069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}