{"id":1036450,"date":"2026-09-01T06:29:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T06:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036450\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T06:29:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T06:29:20","slug":"trump-crashed-nasas-press-conference-to-praise-the-space-telescope-he-repeatedly-tried-to-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036450\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Crashed NASA’s Press Conference to Praise the Space Telescope He Repeatedly Tried to Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the successful launch of NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope <\/a>on Sunday, the agency held a news conference to discuss the observatory\u2019s upcoming science operations. The standard post-launch briefing took a weird turn, however, when the U.S. president unexpectedly chimed in to congratulate NASA on the mission he repeatedly tried to scrap.<\/p>\n

About halfway through Sunday\u2019s news conference, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman received a call from President Donald Trump. Isaacman briefly left the room and returned with the president on the line, speaking at the press briefing through speakerphone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to thank everybody, and congratulate you. Boy, it looked beautiful on television,\u201d Trump said of the Roman space telescope\u2019s launch, according to Space.com<\/a>. \u201cJared is doing a fantastic job, you are doing a fantastic job, and I\u2019m supplying you all that money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump vs. Roman <\/p>\n

The Roman space telescope launched on August 30 at 7:25 a.m. ET. NASA\u2019s $4 billion observatory is equipped with sharp infrared vision and a wide field of view to survey massive areas of the sky and provide clues to some of the universe\u2019s biggest mysteries like dark energy and dark matter.<\/p>\n

But Roman almost didn\u2019t make it to the launch pad. In fact, the telescope survived several termination attempts by the president. In April 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced a plan to cut NASA\u2019s science program in half<\/a>, cancelling at least 41 missions. Leaked budget cuts suggested that no telescope besides the Hubble and Webb space telescopes would have received funding.<\/p>\n

At that point, the Roman telescope was nearly fully assembled ahead of its scheduled launch. The proposed budget would have fully terminated the mission, which had been years in the making.<\/p>\n

When the president\u2019s official skinny budget was released, the administration didn\u2019t outright call off the telescope, but its prospects were still not all that much better. The White House allocated $156.6 million to Roman\u2019s continued development in 2026, less than half of what the mission received in 2025. Luckily, the proposed cuts to NASA\u2019s budget were averted in Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s determination to cancel the Roman mission even preceded last year\u2019s proposed budget cuts. During the president\u2019s first term, the Trump administration tried to cancel the mission on three separate occasions between 2019 and 2021.<\/p>\n

Taking all the credit <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tremulous relationship with the groundbreaking telescope was not conveyed during the president\u2019s impromptu call to Sunday\u2019s news conference. In fact, the president seems to want to give himself credit for NASA\u2019s recent success.<\/p>\n

During the call, Trump recalled visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2016, when he saw \u201cgrass was growing through the cracks in the runways, and there were a lot of cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I looked; that place was closed \u2026 It was just literally closed. And now, again, like we are with the country itself, we\u2019re the hottest there is,\u201d the president added. \u201cWe\u2019re the hottest. You\u2019re the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

After proposing budget cuts that would have destroyed the agency\u2019s prospects, the president suddenly has NASA fever. Trump visited NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday, where he awarded the agency\u2019s Artemis 2 crew with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. During his visit, Trump signed an executive order to establish the nation\u2019s first U.S. Space Academy to train the industry\u2019s workforce.<\/p>\n

When asked about the president\u2019s congratulatory call for a telescope he had tried to cancel, Isaacman responded by saying, \u201cI\u2019m incredibly grateful for his support, the space policy, the resources. Sounds like from that call, maybe even more resources, which is also a great thing for more missions of science and discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the successful launch of NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday, the agency held a news…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,207368,916,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1036450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-donald-trump","tag-nancy-roman-space-telescope","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117194376237484988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}