NASA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When I first came into office three and a half years ago, NASA had lost its way, and the excitement, energy, and ambition, as almost everybody in this room knows, was gone. There was grass growing through the cracks of your concrete runways. Not a pretty sight. Not a pretty sight at all.
The last administration presided over the closing of the Space Shuttle and almost all of the giant facility that keeps so many people working, so many brilliant minds going. People were crying. They were devastated. But now it’s the greatest of its kind anywhere in the world and will get greater and greater with years to come…
By 2024, our astronauts will return to the lunar surface to establish a permanent presence and the launching pad to Mars. And the first woman on the moon will be an American woman. And the first nation to land on Mars will be the United States of America.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump at Kennedy Space Center,” whitehouse.gov, May 30, 2020