This weekend — this Saturday, to be precise — is the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission delivering people to the moon for the first time. President Donald Trump commemorated the event on the day itself with a brief video clip posted to his Twitter feed that he didn’t even bother to write a caption for, let alone compose something freestanding to share with the world on the occasion of attention turning towards the landmark scientific achievement. As anyone familiar with him is no doubt well aware of, it’s not like he’s not prone to run to Twitter with rambling messages when he cares — just the same morning as this video, he ranted in support of noted British racist Katie Hopkins, among other things.
The video he posted is just a short clip of audio from astronaut Neil Armstrong’s initial footsteps on the moon accompanied by some images of his and fellow astronauts’ Buzz Aldrin’s and Michael Collins’s journey. There’s a frame at the end marking why the video was ever produced in the first place, and that’s it.
Check it out:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2019
Of course, the absence of a caption or otherwise personalized message might be because Trump truly has nothing useful to say. The other day at the White House, he met with Aldrin himself, along with figures like NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. At the time, he touted a potential mission to Mars as “certainly… going to be a trip that’s very interesting.” That’s all he had. Imagine if that’s what John F. Kennedy had said when starting the space program — “We’re going to go the moon, and it’s going to be very interesting!”
Trump talking space travel is as you might expect pic.twitter.com/1MleeUHAF8
— Michael Crowley (@michaelcrowley) July 19, 2019
Trump has often taken an egomaniacal interest in space. He’s been stumping, for instance, for projects ranging from a return to the moon to that trip to Mars to the institution of a Space Force as a new branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. What eventual form any of these plans take remains to be seen. Although Trump has certainly made plenty of dramatic pronouncements, he has little to no apparent relevant footing in the actual scientific grounding of what he’s attempting.
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
