Donald Trump has a knack for turning himself into the centerpiece of a moment, even when a room is kept waiting for him to arrive.
A White House event on Friday took an odd turn when the president delayed a ceremony that wasn’t about him.
He reached the venue roughly half an hour late, pushing back the start of the August 28 gathering.
Four astronauts who had traveled farther from Earth than any people in history were in Houston to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
NASA staff filled Johnson Space Center’s auditorium. The ceremony was scheduled for 10 a.m., but everyone had to wait. And when it finally began, he made his entrance.
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For anyone who watched Trump parade the same astronauts onstage like props back in July, the delay was the least of it.
Then he told a room full of NASA employees he didn’t want to speak to them.
Gesturing at the agency staff arranged behind him, Trump said he’d called them a good-looking group of people, then added that he didn’t like speaking with the people behind him because they looked too good.
“I looked at them before I came up. I said, ‘That’s a good looking group of people,” the POTUS recalled in the clip posted online.
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Trump hosted all four astronauts in the Oval Office on April 29, praising their courage. They stood in silence behind him, while he redirected the moment back toward himself.
He said the program required intelligence and physical capability, adding that he would have had “no trouble” joining the mission because he’s “physically very, very good.” He also wondered aloud whether a president could go up on one of these missions.
