OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:30 AM – Wednesday, March 19, 2025
President Donald Trump stated that he is planning to welcome rescued U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the Oval Office when they “get better.”
On Tuesday, Trump told Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham in an interview that he’s expecting to welcome the astronauts at the White House.
“Number one, they have to get better,” Trump said.
“You know, when you’re up there and you have no pull in your muscle, you have no gravity, you can lift 1,000 pounds like this,” he said. “They have to get, they have to get better. It’s going to be a little bit tough for them. It’s not easy. They were up there a long time, and when they do, they’ll come to the Oval Office.”
Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, splashed down off the Gulf Coast of Florida near Tallahassee — just before 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday. They returned to Earth after being in space for 286 days. They originally arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
In addition to the two American astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and the American commander of the Crew-9 mission were aboard as well.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Trump have blamed former President Joe Biden for leaving the astronauts in space for such a long time.
“They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk said last month.
“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 claimed ahead of the mission to bring them home.
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