Recently, NPR shamed President Donald Trump for pledging to rescue two stranded astronauts on the International Space Station because, according to them and despite months of their own reporting to the contrary, they are not stranded. On Friday CBS Evening News host John Dickerson became the latest media personality to do the same thing.
During an interview with Sunita Williams, one of the astronauts in question, Dickerson asked, “Last week, President Trump said you and Butch Wilmore, who's your Starliner crewmate, had been virtually abandoned. Do you feel abandoned up there, commander?”
Trump was clearly talking about abandonment in the physical sense, but Williams, not wanting to throw her NASA colleagues under the bus on national TV or ignore other astronauts currently on the International Space Station, used the word in the more emotional or communicative sense, “No, I don't think those words are quite accurate. You know, we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of the International Space Station. So no, we don't feel abandoned. We feel like we are part of the team, and that is a huge honor.”
[See NewsBusters for more]