US President Donald Trump Participates In Congressional Space Medal Of Honor | FULL ADDRESS

Thank you very much. And thank you to Jared. He's unbelievable. That man is unbelievable. I want to thank you to the very special to the men and women of one of the most legendary landmarks anywhere in the world, the Johnson Space Center, very special place. It's an honor to be here. And it's a place that is a monument to grit and determination and pure American excellence and produce some of the greatest achievements in human history. And I have no doubt that under this great administrator and all of you people, you're going to have no question is going to go further than it ever has. I really believe that. Or I made a big mistake in getting it going again because I had to get it going. It was a little bit it was a little bit not going too well. You know that better than I do. We gather here on these story grounds to celebrate the immense courage and service of four intrepid space heroes who said I was at a very important meeting with the biggest people in the country, maybe some of the biggest people in the world. And somebody said, I'd like to watch Artemis. I said, you would really right in the middle of our meeting. You want to watch? And we actually had a television pulled up and everybody was spellbound somehow. Maybe it's Jared, but somehow that just got the imagination. And we watched every minute of it. In fact, the meeting was a disaster because after that was over, they were so excited, nobody did anything. So it was a total waste of time. But what can I tell you? But it really brought spirit. There is a spirit that we didn't see in this space so much. And now you've really brought it back. And today, we're proud, proudly awarding the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the remarkable crew of Artemis two. Please join me in congratulating Commander Reid Weissman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Cook, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. Great people. Thank you. Congratulations. And I'm going to be presenting them a little something in a couple of minutes. But these astronauts did not do it alone. I want to salute all of the engineers and scientists, launch and landing specialists, everyone at NASA who helped make this mission a great success. I had an uncle who was a great scientist, a great man. He was at MIT for 41 years, Dr. John Trump. And he loves space. He used to tell me about space, space, space. He would throw in the word nuclear every once in a while. He he loves space. We have genetically. We sort of I believe in that stuff. I love it. I find it so interesting, so amazing. It's very special. Thanks to also Associate Administrator Chief Engineer Amit Shathria. And it's Artemis two lead flight director Jeff Rattigan, Artemis two landing and recovery director Lily Villareal. And thanks as well to friends of NASA. We have Senator Ted Cruz. Where's Ted? Are you here, Ted? Look at this guy. He said, stand up, Ted. He is a good man. We've had good moments and bad moments together. And I will tell you, he's good and he's smart and he loves what he's doing right here. This is something special, right? Also, another great warrior and friend of mine, Brian Babin, representative congressman, does a fantastic job. Thank you, Brian. And Jake LZ. Jake, thank you. What a group political. So I won't. But I will tell you, from 2015, everyone thinks I ran in 20. So I actually announced in 2015, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called up. He said, I want to be the chairman of your campaign in Texas. And you've never left, right? And we won it in record, record, record votes. Nobody came close. And I just want to thank you for that. You are a fantastic chairman. We didn't even have to speak too much. It was sort of and that's what we have to do in a little while in the election coming up. So important. Texas Comptroller Don Huff Hines. Congratulations, Don. That was a great win you had. Congratulations. We watched that very closely. Great job. And of course, we're honored to be joined by amazing members of the NASA Astronaut Corps, past and present. They are amazing indeed. And thank you for all I mean, all you do and risking your lives to advance our voyage into the heavens where you go, you go to the heavens. And I understand this weekend that NASA has a very big launch coming up. The Roman Space Telescope. I was asking Jared, is that a big one? He said, it's really big. So I hope everyone that's watching, look at all the media back there, all the press. I hope you're going to inform people because it's it's hundreds of times more powerful than Hubble and it will help unlock the secrets of the universe. So to everyone involved here at NASA, good luck this weekend. It's a big deal. And he was given a little briefing. I said, I want to know about this if it's so big. And it really is something hundreds of times more powerful than Hubble. Now, from the very beginning, America has always been a frontier nation and space is the highest of all the frontiers. Our manifest destiny is to explore and settle this great unknown, carry forward the light of American liberty into the stars. And Americans were the first in flight, the first in the moon. And we'll be the first in space no matter where it is. And I know we're going to be looking at Mars very shortly. In fact, you're already partially there. A lot of work's been done. And that seems to be the next frontier. You'll be stopping on the moon and you're going to be going to Mars. What excitement. What excitement. Yeah. When I took office in twenty seventeen, America's endeavors in space had come to a complete halt, was held back by decades of gross mismanagement in Washington. You had Peter. Well, maybe they didn't like it. Maybe they didn't like the concept. I don't know. But it was certainly not anything. It was very embarrassing, actually, what had happened. Not only had the United States lost its ability to send our astronauts to the moon, but under the under a number of administrations, I have to tell you, but in particular, the Obama administration, we even lost our ability to send astronauts into orbit at all. We had no ability in space whatsoever. We totally lost it with everything we spent, with all of the talent and all of the genius and all of the money. We had nothing. And when I got here, I came here. I went to Florida. Visited a couple of the places I wanted to see what was going on. NASA was closed, absolutely closed. It was almost nobody there. It was like an empty building, not a good look. And I went down. I looked at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in particular. I saw something that you rarely see. They had grass growing out of the cracks in the runway. You had a runway that was all broken up. It was all bad. I know all about that from being very good at construction. You had the cracks in the runway. We had grass growing out of the cracks. It's almost hard to do. And I said, boy, this is sad. It was very sad. That's where we started. Yet, as the world can see today under the Trump administration, we have brought back America's space program and came out of the Dark Age. And it's now into the Golden Age. This is the Golden Age of America. And this is a big part of it. So to every astronaut here today, I want to make this promise to you. Our nation will conquer and we will conquer indeed this vast frontier that we have before us. And we'll reach American courage and we'll use American genius and daring and all of the things that we have that nobody else can ever compete with. We will explore it. We will tame it and we will win it. We will always win. In 2016, the United States of America and our government private sector launched just 22 rockets into orbit combined. So we did 22. And last year, we conducted nearly 200 orbital launches. And that number will continue to grow very, very rapidly. As you probably know, you know, every one of them that's getting ready. There are a lot of them by embracing competition in the private sector. We freed up NASA to focus on what it does best, leading the cutting edge of exploration and human space flight. In my first term, I signed the orders creating the Artemis program and officially directed NASA to return American astronauts to the moon and then push onward to Mars. And that's exactly what we're doing. And we had a little interlude of four years, but somehow it was limping along. It was OK. It was limping along. And now I'm back. And we're doing more than limping. We don't limp. Eight years later, these dreams are really coming through at a level that nobody ever imagined. Nobody imagined what is happening now. And even more importantly, what space has done for our military in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities. Incredible. Don't forget, I was the one that gave you Space Force and we had no Space Force. And when people heard about it, they thought we were kidding. They thought it was like comic book stuff. It wasn't at all. It's turning out to be one of our most important branches. It'll be some and only getting more important with time. And we were number three in space at the time I did that. And now we're leading by a tremendous amount. We made some very good original initial hires. We put some people in charge that were really outstanding, and they did it right from the beginning. On July 4th of this year, I presented a veteran of the last mission to the moon, Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmidt, with a very special American flag that flew over the United States Capitol on our nation's 250th birthday. Very, very special flag. And it's here today right next to me. And Jack is here also. Where's Jack? Where's Jack? Number one, where's Jack? Number two, where's the flag? Anybody letting me know? Jack, you look good. I know the flag looks good. Where's the flag? Oh, it's over there. It's hidden behind a lot of rockets. Thank you, Jack. Very good. I was wondering, you know, I'm saying, am I supposed to be introducing a flag that I can't see? It's invisible. Great job, by the way. Great guys. Still a good-looking guy. You were always a good-looking guy. Now I think you're better with the white hair, if you want to know the truth. You look better than you did 20 years ago. Before the end of my term, American astronauts will return to the lunar surface. And we're looking forward to that. We'll do it. And we're then going to the next step. And when we do, they'll plant this very important flag to mark the site of the first permanent American settlement on the moon. They're going to have a settlement. They're building a settlement up in the moon. And we're not going to stop there because under Administrator Isaacman, and I have to tell you, with Jared, everybody wanted him. You know that, Ted? Everybody. I got calls from you, but I got calls from Democrats. Can you believe it? I won't say anything bad about them. I'm not going to change their term or their name. But Democrats, D-E-M, and they called and they said he's fantastic, which set him back a lot, because when I got so many calls from Democrats, they said, is that good or bad? But I got a lot of calls from Republicans and Democrats, something that doesn't happen very often. And the people just said he's just the best. There was no competition. There was actually no competition. And I made it, and these turned out to be better than we even thought possible, right? Even better. So we're lucky to have Jared. But NASA has already begun to work on the first ever nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, which will launch in 2028 on a mission to Mars. It's going to be so incredible. They have to go nuclear because they have unlimited, essentially unlimited fuel. You don't have to fill up the tanks every so many miles, right? It's incredible. This ship will be among the first of what will ultimately be a massive American Starfleet, making space travel almost as common as ocean travel today and bringing our military to a new level of excellence. Again, so much of this has to do with our military. I don't know if I'd be as enthused about it, but what it's done to our offensive and defensive capability is incredible. So we're doing this, but we're also, when you think of space or when you think of what we're doing here, the military is a very big factor. We're at levels that nobody ever thought would ever happen. And you see how well we fight. We fight very well. We're getting so much of our information from Space Force, as an example, makes us a much better military. You look at Venezuela, what happened there? One day, actually, to be exact, it was 48 minutes. And so much of that information came from space. And all the attacks are, you look at our blockade, which is incredible. It's so successful, being helped by space, you know, being helped by space. So who would think? But it's so important. And that's a big component of what you're doing out here. These are ambitious goals. But as I said in my inaugural address last year, ambition is the lifeblood of a truly great nation. You don't have ambition, you're not going to have a great nation. When Americans are determined, nothing can hold us back. And American dominance in this domain is not a choice. It's an economic and national security necessity. A nation cannot be first on Earth if we're going to be second in space, just not going to happen. Somehow, it just doesn't work that way. It makes sense. I was going to say, does it make sense? Yeah, I guess it does when you think about it, right, Brian? For this reason, in my first term, I created the sixth branch, United States Armed Forces, Space Force. And today I have another historic announcement to make. This is something that's so exciting for me, given the rapid growth of the Space Force and the commercial space industry and the expansion of our ambitions to the moon and far beyond the moon, far beyond. The moon will someday be thought of a close location, like in the old days, the subway, the first stop. The moon will be a close location. But it's clear that we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers and civil operators and everything else to do what we have to do right now, doing the best and will continue, and I think by leaps and bounds. And that's why, in a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin the process of creating a new national academy. It's called the U.S. Space Academy. That's a big deal. So you think of West Point and you think of Annapolis and you think of the Air Force Academy and you think of the Coast Guard Academies. Great. They're all great. But we're going to have a Space Force. We're going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most. That's exciting. That's really exciting. And I'm going to be choosing a location very shortly. I know where some people want it that are in this audience. Some people come down, this one guy over there, he's lobbying me, saying, leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I'm not sure he's going to get it. I don't know if he's going to get it. But everybody wants it because it's the hot thing. Space is the hot thing. I'll tell you, Ted Cruz and Brian, you guys, they're working too, I have to tell you. Just leave me alone, Ted, please. The United States Space Force, as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry, it'll attract, train and graduate the very best of our nation and our nation really has to offer. And this is going to be, I said, I'll do it. But it's got to be top line. It's got to be the equivalent of the others, which are great. You know, they're among the hardest schools to get into. You know, you talk about the Ivy League schools. It's tougher to get into West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, Coast Guard, too. You know, we can't forget that. But so, so tough, all of them among the hardest schools to get into. And they're great. And they're great scholars, great everything. You sort of have to have a lot of everything, not a little, but a lot of everything. But I said this has to be comparable to that, you know, we don't want to do it in any other way. And it's going to be even architecturally, we don't want to do it in any other way. And it's going to be even architecturally, it's got to be, it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be the top, going to be as good as it can get. You know, doing a bad building doesn't cost a lot less than doing a great building. I've always said it, doing great architecture, doing something really great, that's also practical, doesn't cost much more than doing some of the bad stuff that you see all over the place. But we'll, we're going to make this such, so good and so exciting. But first, we have to honor the heroes who are in spot behind me, these people, I looked at them coming before I came up, I said, that's a good looking group of people. I don't like speaking with those people behind me, to be honest, they look too good. But they're great people. They're great, great people. But the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, that's exactly what it says. This is a very rare thing. It's for courageous people, brilliant people, bestowed on astronauts who have distinguished themselves with exceptional service to the nation and all of mankind. Only 30 extraordinary men and women, long period of time too, in the history of our country have received this extremely rare and distinguished honor. Real legends like Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and the immortal heroes of Apollo 1. Today, we add four new names to this elite roster of fearless explorers. It's really what they are when you think of it, fearless explorers. They're very smart. The crew of Artemis 2 blasted off from Kennedy, NASA's great space center, last April and flew more than 250,000 miles from Earth in, very interestingly, our 250th anniversary year only. Jared could have thought of that, I assume. I hope that wasn't just by luck. I hope that. But it's pretty good. They actually went far beyond what would be the normal target, the longest, the furthest anybody's ever been in space. They crossed behind the dark side of the Moon and glimpsed sites never seen before, never seen by human eyes, and returned to Earth at 30 times the speed of sound and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, completing the flawless mission. It was absolutely flawless. Artemis 2 was led by a Navy veteran, a pilot, a father, and a great patriot, Commander Reid Wiseman. With unfailing strength and calm, Reid led the crew through every phase of the flight and their safe return to Earth. He was a great leader, respected by everybody, respected by everybody. As many people will remember, during the mission, the crew named a previously unnamed lunar crater in loving memory of Reid's wonderful wife. We lost to cancer. So they call it the Carroll Crater. So that's making Reid a little weepy right now because I heard she was an incredible woman. We'll never be forgotten now. She'll never be forgotten. We honor her. And truly, the memory is all about the Moon. That's a great one. I wish they'd named something like that after me, Reid, but I don't know. I'll have to get the governor's approval. I like that. That's beautiful. So, Reid, we salute you, we salute your family, and we congratulate you. Thank you very much. And today, we also honor a distinguished naval aviator with an outstanding record as a test pilot. He served in 24 combat missions for our country before taking on the most dangerous mission of all, pilot Victor Glover. Victor led guidance, navigation, and control operations with perfect skill and absolute total precision. And you have to have great precision or things will not go well. And he did it with the heart and the faith that brought out the best in this incredible team before the spacecraft passed behind the Moon and lost communication. And they did. I was watching. There was absolutely none. I said, what's going on? But they lost total communication with Earth for a fairly extended period of time. Victor turned to prayer and reminded us all of God's love for all of his children. And Victor, thank you very much and congratulations. It's incredible. We also – thank you. We also recognize mission specialist Christina Koch, who before this flight had already set a world record for the longest continuous flight ever by a woman in space. On Artemis II, Christina led major science and observation tasks, making vital contributions to future missions and the advance of human knowledge. Christina tells young people, do what scares you. It's an interesting statement. I don't know about that, Christina. I don't know about that, Christina. But that's the attitude that you have to have. You want to do this. And that is the attitude that she has and I think that everybody standing behind me has, frankly. Her further and the further she went, the stronger she got. She was really amazing, they say, on the trip. She was just amazing. So, Christina, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Great job. And finally, we honor a master of science and physics, a fighter pilot – a great one – and a beloved member of the astronaut team, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. On Artemis II, Jeremy became the first non-American in history to travel beyond low Earth orbit. He documented lunar terrain while contributing enormously to space science and physics research. And along with Christina, he helped the crew stay healthy and develop standards and best practices. Jeremy, thank you very much. Great job. Great job. So, with unmatched bravery and unwavering faith, these four extraordinary astronauts renewed the legacy of the pioneers and explorers who charted the world's oceans, climbed its highest summits, and tamed the American West. Great people. Great men and women. Incredible. That spirit is written into the soul of our nation. And in the daring deeds of these heroes, we're reminded that, for America, no aim is too high, no journey is too far, no challenge is too tough. In this country, we're limited only by the size of our aspirations and the scale of our dreams. We have the American Dream, and the American Dream is back. I think the American Dream is back, stronger than ever before. We're doing great. This country is doing great right now. Never did anything like it. Eighty-one stock market highs in one and a half years never had anything like it, including they broke it again yesterday for the 81st time. And $19.2 trillion is being invested in our country from outside countries and interests and people. And we've never seen it. That's why I call it the golden age. It's an exciting time. Tomorrow is going to be very exciting. And today, thanks to the crew of Artemis 2, those dreams are closer than ever before. And we're on the cusp of an adventure and something that's so special. People have really not imagined anything. It's really civilization is into the stars. The stars are up there, and they're beautiful. And you're right next to them. You have the courage to be right next to them. Few people do. But you're leading the way. It's great. Great bravery. I want to thank again, Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, very special people. And now I will sign the executive order creating the U.S. Space Academy. And then we will do the honors. Thank you very much, everybody. Great honor. Then like, share and subscribe to Mirror Now.