#Donald_Trump #Artemis_II #Trump_conversation_with_the_astronauts
President’s conversation with astronauts veered from praise to perplexing pause
A celebratory phone call between President Donald Trump and the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission took an unexpectedly awkward turn Monday night, when a full minute of dead air left both the commander-in-chief and the crew floating in silence.
The president spoke with Americans Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen just after 10:30 p.m. ET for a little over 12 minutes, congratulating them on having traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history earlier that day.
“Today, you’ve made history and made all America really proud,” Trump told the crew, who were some 250,000 miles from home. “Humans have never really seen anything quite like what you’re doing in a manned spacecraft. It’s really special.”
Awkward scenes aboard Artemis II as Trump stops ranting and none of the astronauts have anything left to say to him, leading to extended dead air pic.twitter.com/4PjfPhfgY8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2026
But the call took a curious turn when Hansen, the Canadian member of the crew, went out of his way to thank Trump for allowing him to participate—a striking gesture given the president’s previous threats to annex Canada and turn it into the 51st state.
Trump responded by name-dropping one of the few Canadians he knows: NHL Hall-of-Famer Wayne Gretzky. The president, who has previously joked that the “Great One” could become governor of Canada if it were to become a U.S. state, told Hansen that Gretzky, Prime Minister Mark Carney, and “other friends” in Canada were all proud of him.
“You have a lot of courage. I’m not sure if they’d want to do that,” Trump told Hansen. “I’m not even sure if ‘The Great One’ would want to do that to be honest with you.”
But then came the silence.
The astronauts did not respond. Instead, they watched their floating microphone drift through the air, smiling awkwardly at the camera. Approximately one minute passed with no one speaking, Trump quiet on the other end of the line as well.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman finally checked with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman that the president was still connected. Isaacman and Trump both confirmed they were there. Laughter could be heard on one end of the line as Wiseman gave a thumbs-up to the camera while the rest of the crew continued their uneasy smiles.
“I think we might have gotten cut off,” Trump eventually said, attempting to wave away the awkwardness. “It is a long distance, it’s a long ways. The reception’s been great,” he continued, before blaming the pause on a “nine-second delay.” The crew nodded in apparent agreement.
The Daily Beast has contacted NASA for clarification and the White House for comment.
The president then invited the astronauts to the Oval Office, adding, “I’ll ask for your autograph, because I don’t really ask for autographs much but you deserve that.” He closed the call by mentioning a future trip to Mars, telling the crew, “I know you have Mars very much in your mind, so we’ll start thinking about that pretty soon, I think.”
Earlier in the call, Wiseman had told the president that the biggest surprise of the day came when the crew watched a solar eclipse and spotted Mars in the distance. “All of us commented how excited we are to watch this nation and this planet become a two-planet species,” Wiseman said.
Having completed their mission, the crew is now headed back to Earth, with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean planned for Friday.
With The Daily Beast
