This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Biden Space

White House Weighs In On Biden/Trump Space Policy Overlaps

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 31, 2021
Filed under
White House Weighs In On Biden/Trump Space Policy Overlaps

Keith’s note: During the daily White House press briefing today space made the news again:
Kristin Fisher (Fox): “You know the Biden administration – they just announced its intention to retain the National Space Council – and this is on top of the White House voicing its support for the Space Force and NASA’s Artemis program. I mean – these are three programs or policies that President Trump and the Trump administration put in place. So – would it be fair to say that space – and space policy – is one of the few areas where President Biden actually agrees with his predecessor?””
Jen Psaki: “I think that sounds accurate to me. Look – I think the President believes that the National Space Council provides an opportunity to generate national space policy strategies, synchronize on America’s space activities at a time of unprecedented activity. It’s also an opportunity to generate by America’s own activities in space. So – it’s certainly a program — or a council – I should say — he is excited to keep in place and one – I think it’s fair to say – he agrees with the past administration’s maintaining the program.”

Team Biden Decides To Keep The National Space Council, earlier post
National Space Council UAG Wants You To Think They Did Something Important, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

11 responses to “White House Weighs In On Biden/Trump Space Policy Overlaps”

  1. Fred says:
    0
    0

    Fox on a never ending quest to make Trump relevant.

    • Bob Mahoney says:
      0
      0

      The reporter happens to be the daughter of two astronauts, in fact her mom was the first-ever mother to fly in space.

      • Buckaroo says:
        0
        0

        In which case there were many other questions she could have asked about the direction of Biden’s space policy. Yet she chose to make her question all about Trump. So there’s even less excuse.

        • Bob Mahoney says:
          0
          0

          You don’t see the multifaceted brilliance and far-reaching implications of the question? How unfortunate. The press sec’s answer validated both quite neatly!

          • Buckaroo says:
            0
            0

            “Multifaceted brilliance and far-reaching implications?” Wow. Maybe my sarcasm detector is broken, but that’s some stunning and absurd hyperbole regarding an obvious attempt at a gotcha question meant to pander to Trumpists in the Fox News audience. The fact that Psaki was able to provide a meaningful response doesn’t change the intent of the question.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
            0
            0

            You seem to be seeing only what you want to see. If this is truly so, I find it sad.

            But perhaps if you were to let go for a moment that the name Trump is attached to the previous administration, you just might perceive the larger and deeper political & space policy facets inherent in the question and consequently addressed in the response.

          • Buckaroo says:
            0
            0

            Here’s what I see: A Fox reporter attempting to play to her audience by crediting Trump himself – not just the people behind the scenes who were actually responsible – for projects that he didn’t understand and had nothing to do with personally, which were discussed and/or in the works before his administration, and which came to fruition during his administration purely because of the work of others. (There were good people working on space policy within the Trump administration. Trump wasn’t one of them.) Psaki was able to spin that straw into gold by providing a diplomatic and measured answer. So there’s only one person here who’s seeing what he wants to see – e.g. that the question exhibits “multifaceted brilliance” – and it ain’t me.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
            0
            0

            As I interpreted your take, then. Sad indeed, but so be it. Cardboard is cardboard in both packaging and worldviews.

            Cheers!

          • Buckaroo says:
            0
            0

            So, in place of substantive rebuttal, you double down on condescension and haughty allusion to your own vastly more perceptive – yet for some reason not articulated – interpretation. Fine. If that’s how you want to roll, we can leave it here.

          • Courtney Rigo says:
            0
            0

            I’m with Bob on this (mostly). While the motivations behind the Fox News reporter’s question could be questioned, it was still a perfectly reasonable topic, and I did not detect the question as biased.

            Continuity of large NASA projects when there’s a change in the party controlling the White House, has been sorely lacking for decades. The fact Biden is supporting the Space Force, Artemis, and the National Space Council is a clear pattern, as the Fox News reporter pointed out, and is very notable. It means that both Trump and Biden saw/see space as very important to this nation’s future, both militarily (Space Force) and symbolically (first woman on moon). Give Trump credit for making good decisions on space (even if you hate everything else he did, attribute it to the “law of averages”), and to Biden for not discarding those good decisions just out of political spite — he put the country first.

          • Buckaroo says:
            0
            0

            We agree more than you might think. My objection here is to the framing of the question, in that it’s an attempt to rehabilitate Trump’s image by a reporter from a network with a documented history of bad faith. No reasonable person who has observed the last four years would accept that Trump had any constructive or useful contribution to the creation of these policies, other than signing off on them because he recognized a potential for self-aggrandizement. It wasn’t Trump’s wisdom and keen intellect, or his informed weighing of the issues involved, that resulted in their enactment. People like Scott Pace, or even Mike Pence (with whom I disagree in just about every other policy domain) are the ones who are actually responsible. “…(T)hese are three programs or policies that President Trump and the Trump administration put in place,” effectively challenging Psaki to say nice things about Trump, is meant to perpetuate a half-truth. There are other ways the question could have been framed that would have gotten to the actual policy implications, but a good-faith discussion of policy was not its intent.