"They couldn’t stop DOGE, so now, they’ve resorted to violence and terrorism. I’m afraid to ask what’s next?" . . .

 Elon Musk Confirms That He Offered to Return Astronauts Sooner But Was Turned Down by Biden Admin ‘For Political Reasons’   "Elon Musk appeared on the Sean Hannity show tonight and confirmed that he could have returned the stranded astronauts before today and that SpaceX made the offer to the Biden administration but was turned down for reasons which were political.

"This is nothing short of amazing. The people in the Biden administration were so petty that they put their political ambitions ahead of the lives of these people. How is this not already a national scandal?

"In the clip below, Sean Hannity prefaces his question by stressing that this should not be a moment for politics, but that he wants clarification. Musk says, “We definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier, there’s no question about that. The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days and they’ve been there for ten months. So obviously that doesn’t make sense, SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back after a few months at most and we made that offer to the Biden administration. It was rejected for political reasons and that’s just a fact.” . . .

SpaceX Rescue Reinforces DOGE’s Privatization Point   . . ."It might have become even longer if that slayer of unnecessary government programs, Elon Musk, had not come to NASA’s rescue. When President Dwight Eisenhower prevailed upon Congress to pass the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the belief that no private entity could compete with the Soviet Union’s space program undergirded the enthusiastic federal funding of the new administration. Sixty-seven years later, the U.S. government looked to a private entity — as it now does on a regular basis for much else with regard to travel beyond the blue — to rescue its astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.

"Last year, the Biden administration squashed any talk of Musk’s SpaceX retrieving the stranded astronauts in 2024. NASA instead scheduled a SpaceX rescue date for long after the election. Cynics regarded this, given Musk’s criticism of the Biden administration and July endorsement of Trump, as an administration playing politics with lives on the line during an election year. The astronauts certainly took their lost-in-space status stoically in stride and studiously avoided Dr. Zachary Smith antics of petulantly assigning blame to any political actors.

"Musk insists that in 2024 he offered NASA to send SpaceX to bring the astronauts back to Earth to a listen-to-the-crickets response. A month ago, Musk reiterated this claim in an interview with Sean Hannity by stating that the astronauts “were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.' ” . . .