Trump Campaign Pulls Space Launch Ad That Violated NASA Rules
Trump Campaign’s SpaceX Launch Video Violates NASA Ad Guidelines
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s campaign removed a video that violated National Aeronautics and Space Administration ad guidelines by featuring the federal agency’s astronauts.
The video, which opens with President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech declaring that America would go to the moon, flashed several recent images of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. The agency doesn’t allow the astronauts it employs to have their likenesses displayed in advertisements or marketing materials.
YouTube’s website shows the video was removed by the uploader. It also no longer appears on Facebook or Twitter. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment about why the video was taken down. A spokeswoman said earlier the footage had been collected from publicly available resources.
NASA was not aware of the video until it was posted, a spokesperson said. The video ended with the disclaimer that it was paid for by the campaign and approved by Trump, which is required by the Federal Election Commission.
Behnken and Hurley blasted off to the International Space Station last week aboard a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket in the first-ever launch of humans aboard a company spacecraft. Trump made two trips to Florida to observe the launch, which was a major milestone in the NASA-administered Commercial Crew Program, a public-private partnership that started under the Obama administration.
Karen Nyberg, a retired NASA astronaut who is married to Hurley, called the video “disturbing.”
The 2 1/2-minute digital ad also included a brief shot of Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive officer. The closely held company won a NASA contract in 2014 along with Boeing Co. and beat its rival to the orbiting lab.
Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment on the ad, which also featured several of the company’s employees. A Change.org petition calling for Trump to stop politicizing SpaceX and NASA’s accomplishments had almost 5,000 signatures Thursday evening.
Trump’s attempt to seize on the milestone space launch has been drowned out by coverage of his administration’s handling of the civil unrest that erupted after George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The campaign video has about 26,000 views on YouTube.
Trump has vowed to jump-start a new space economy, boost funding to NASA and return to the moon by 2024. The administration formed the U.S. Space Force, the newest branch of the nation’s military, in December.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.