One of the media’s worst habits is its urge to contradict everything President Donald Trump says simply because he says them. NPR had a rather comical example of this phenomena on Wednesday as it ran a headline saying Trump was wrong to say two astronauts on the International Space Station are stranded despite three previous NPR articles saying they were stranded.
Under the headline “Trump asks SpaceX to ‚go get‘ two stranded ISS astronauts. They’re not stranded,” Brendan Byrne cites a Trump social media post, „I have just asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘Good luck Elon!!!’“
A displeased Byrne continued, “The astronauts Musk and Trump are presumably referencing are NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. NASA has long said the crew isn’t ‘stranded’ and a plan to return them safely to Earth has been in place for months. In fact, NASA astronauts always train for lengthy missions and medical experts have kept a watchful eye on the health of the two during their extended stay.”
Byrne would also add, “The astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft after launching from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in June 2024. The test flight was supposed to last only eight days. But engineers at NASA and Boeing uncovered issues with the spacecraft’s propulsion system, and decided to return the vehicle back to Earth without a crew. The two have remained at the station ever since.”
An eight-day mission has been transformed into a seven-month one, but Byrne doesn’t like the word “stranded.” That is odd considering, in this very article, NPR advertises a related article from August 24 headlined “NASA will bring stranded astronauts back on SpaceX—not Boeing’s starliner.”
That headline also provided material for the All Things Considered podcast, as did an August 8 headline, “After two months, astronauts stranded at the ISS may have a way back home.”
Additional NPR headlines read, “Stranded NASA astronauts say being stuck in space is just part of the job” and “SpaceX crew arrives at the ISS, with plans to bring back 2 stranded astronauts” on September 13 and 29, respectively.
NPR REPEATEDLY:- The Astronauts are STRANDED- They are stranded in space, that’s what they are- Yep, they are stranded all right…@NPR AFTER TRUMP BRINGS IN ELIN TO GO FETCH THEM- They are NOT stranded! Why are you saying they are?!?!?! pic.twitter.com/aY0YYVqyVr
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) January 29, 2025
Other outlets, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and CNN, have also used the word „stranded.“
While Byrne did not write a formal fact-check, it provides a useful counterpoint to the industry claim that the media needs to put extra scrutiny on Trump because he has a uniquely difficult relationship with the truth. In this case, Donald Trump echoed what NPR has said for months, but because Trump said it, NPR found the need to do a complete 180.
