Elon Musk Is Obsessed With Space, but Not Enough to Refrain From Insulting an Actual Astronaut

It's hard to understand when Elon Musk does any work. When he's not standing behind President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, or sitting next to him during a wildly confusing interview with Fox News, he appears to spend most of his time posting on X. Using a social media company that you purchased to mostly to tear down others is as cringey as buying a concert t-shirt and wearing it during the show. We do know one thing he is not doing, and that's being present for his children.

It stands to reason that the head of a non-official government agency who is also the CEO of one company, CTO of another, and owner of a third, would have almost zero free time. And yet, Elon always manages to prioritize insulting others. During the aforementioned Fox News interview, Elon said the two NASA astronauts left on the International Space Station were abandoned for "political reasons." When a third astronaut called him a liar, Elon didn't take it well.

A month before the Fox News sit-down, Elon posted to X about Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been on the International Space Station since June 2024. Elon wrote that it's, "terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long." Less than four hours later, President Trump took to Truth Social to say he asked Elon to bring them home and echoed the idea that they were "abandoned" by former President Joe Biden.

When asked about this by Sean Hannity, Elon once again said, "They were left up there for political reasons." Andreas Mogensen, an astronaut who became the first Danish citizen to fly in space in 2015, shared a clip from the interview on X, and wrote, "What a lie." Elon replied using the R-word, "You are fully r----ded." He continued, "SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago," then said he offered to do so but the Biden administration said no and pushed back their return for "political reasons."

After Elon made his derogatory comments, Andreas was back with some pertinent facts. But first, he buttered him up. "Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla," he wrote in his post. "You know as well as I do that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September." He called out Elon for not bringing them home now, as they are "returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September."

Andreas isn't the only astronaut who had something to say on the matter. Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield shared an interview to X that Butch and Suni did with Anderson Cooper in February 2025, where they said they did not feel abandoned or stranded. "We come prepared. We come committed," said Butch. Chris added that they are professional astronauts. "Suni’s Space Station commander, they’re doing spacewalks, working hard on behalf of NASA and all partners, having the time of their lives," he wrote.