Joe Biden was never an “America First” president. He seemed to care about anything but the United States.
And a new bombshell report reveals how Biden rejected these stranded American citizens.
Imagine being stuck in space for nine months, far longer than planned, with the vast expanse of Earth shimmering below—and wondering if the delay was less about safety and more about an election back home.
That’s the theory floating around about American astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, who found themselves marooned aboard the International Space Station (ISS) after their ride home hit a snag. One former astronaut, Clayton “Astroclay” Anderson, suggests their extended stay might have been tangled up in political maneuvering tied to the 2024 presidential race.
Wilmore and Williams launched into space expecting a quick 10-day mission, but their return was derailed when their Boeing spacecraft was deemed too risky for the journey back. Enter Anderson, a seasoned space veteran who once called the ISS home himself. Speaking to the New York Post, he speculated that President Joe Biden’s administration might have hesitated to greenlight a rescue, wary of a potential mishap casting a shadow over the election season.
“Elon [Musk] said it was politically motivated; I think there’s some truth in that,” Anderson remarked, pointing to the SpaceX founder’s vocal claims.
“He offered to bring them home earlier. It came about right before the election,” Anderson noted, referencing Musk’s assertion that his SpaceX rockets could have swooped in to save the day. On February 20, Musk took to X, declaring, “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”
The timeline adds intrigue: Musk had publicly backed Donald Trump in July 2024, just weeks after the astronauts’ predicament began, though it’s hazy when he pitched his rescue plan to Biden.
“My opinion is that they didn’t want a disaster right before an election that they were trying to win and therefore asked the astronauts to sacrifice and stay in orbit,” Anderson mused. It’s a bold claim, and one that got a surprising nod from Wilmore himself. During a recent press conference beamed down from the ISS, he said, “I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual.”
NASA: The stranded NASA astronauts confirm Biden refused to let SpaceX bring them home last year. pic.twitter.com/eLxm2YSS2g
— @amuse (@amuse) March 6, 2025
The stranded astronaut’s teenage daughter, Daryn, echoed the sentiment in a TikTok post, hinting at “negligence” and “a lot of politics” behind her father’s prolonged absence. “There’s a lot of things that I’m not at liberty to say in that I don’t know fully about,” she admitted, though she still chats with her dad nearly every day.
The situation raises eyebrows when you consider why NASA has two players—SpaceX and Boeing—in the game.
“The original reason why SpaceX and Boeing were contracted was to give NASA redundancy,” Anderson explained. “We got into a perfect situation where redundancy could be utilized and it wasn’t.”
Ideally, if one company’s craft faltered, the other could step up. So why didn’t it happen? Anderson believes politics crept into a realm where they don’t belong—space exploration.
Still, he acknowledged the astronaut mindset: “We’re professionals. We’re willing to stay and bite the bullet for NASA. That’s the expectation. Astronauts know that any space flight can be extended or shortened within a moment’s notice for any reason.”
But willingness doesn’t mean happiness. Anderson, who logged 167 days in space and penned The Ordinary Spaceman, didn’t mince words: “If it were me and I had to stay longer like that, I would be very angry.”
He also pointed out a disconnect on the ground. “The prevailing attitude of people is just tolerate [the situation]. ‘They’re in space; they’re superheroes; they get to see the Earth. They’ll get over it.’”
For now, Wilmore and Williams are sharing the ISS with NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Relief is finally on the horizon—they’re set to hitch a ride home on a SpaceX four-seater that’s been docked at the station since September, when it delivered Hague and Gorbunov, per USA Today.
Soon, they’ll trade the starry void for solid ground and reunite with their families. But as their saga wraps up, the question lingers: was their extended stay a tale of technical caution—or a calculated political play by then-President Biden?
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
