Leave it to President Donald Trump to take things light-years away from normal.
During a live call between the president and NASA’s Artemis II crew on Monday, Trump left astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen utterly confused after an awkward pause on his end that lasted a little over a minute.
The moment occurred about nine minutes into the video, after Hansen, the lone Canadian on the crew, thanked Trump on behalf of Canada for his “space leadership.”
Trump responded that he’d spoken to legendary Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky and Prime Minister Mark Carney about Hansen, and said they were both proud of him.
“You have a lot of courage doing what you do, a lot of bravery, and a lot of genius. But they are very, very proud of you,” Trump said.
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As the crew beamed from the compliment and began to goof around with their mic, which was spinning midair thanks to zero gravity, the conversation on Trump’s end got as silent as deep space.
At first, the astronauts seemed to assume that the conversation was over, with Wiseman and Hansen nodding and giving a thumbs-up, which prompted Glover to start clapping.
But after shuffling noises could be heard on Trump’s end, the crew began to squirm a bit. Wiseman finally took the mic and requested “a quick comms check” to make sure someone was “still on the line.” This prompted Trump to finally speak.
“I am, yes,” he said, drawing laughter from mission control.
“Yeah, I think we might have gotten cut off. It is a long distance. It’s a long ways. The reception’s been great,” Trump continued, before proceeding to recap his talking points about Gretzky and Canada.
“There’s a little bit of about a nine-second delay, but uh no, I just had a, uh, a statement for, I don’t know what you heard, but, uh, I was just saying they’re very proud of your brilliant person from Canada on the ship, and Wayne Gretzky is a great friend of mine, and he’s very proud of him, and the prime minister I spoke to, they’re very, very honored that, uh, you have a courageous person from Canada. You have a lot of courageous people from Canada. So, it was very nice. I, I’m not sure if you heard me say that, but it was very nice.”
When clips of the long pause made it to X, users piled on about the awkwardness of the moment. Some even mentioned that the Trump administration had sent a budget proposal on Friday — in the midst of the Artemis II mission — to have NASA’s budget slashed by 23%.
Read their responses below.