Fox News host Jesse Watters shared a cringey question that was one giant leap backward for mankind.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore gave their first official interview after safely returning from their nine-month long extended stay aboard the International Space Station after thinking they would return in eight days.
Two weeks after splashing down off the coast of Florida and getting reacquainted with their land legs, the spacewalkers sat down with Fox News' America's Newsroom and shared their experiences about floating in space together with the hard news program's co-anchor Bill Hemmer.
But if Hemmer's Fox colleague Watters had his druthers, he would've pressed the astronauts primarily on one thing that was weighing on his mind.
“Hemmer’s a great interviewer, but he whiffed,” Watters quipped on Fox's The Five, saying he had one note for the veteran journalist.
Watters continued:
“The main question that everybody wanted asked was, did they hook up?"
"And he just left it hanging out there. I hope there’s a part two to this interview, Hemmer, because next time I see you I’m going to slap you silly.”
Here's a clip.
Watters, who believes "real men" don't wave with both hands like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, continued envisioning a scenario out of a sci-fi romance movie concerning the two astronauts, despite them being in their respective marriages back home.
Said Watters:
“They’ve been left up there. I hope they like each other. Maybe they’ll love each other, I don’t know. But they’ve been left up there, think of it."
"And I see the woman with the wild hair. Good solid head of hair she’s got. There’s no kidding, there’s no games with her hair," he added, referring to Williams.
Social media users rolled their eyes at Watters' frat boy line of questioning.
In the interview, Williams explained to Hemmer about the challenge of space travel.
“Space flight is hard. It’s really hard."
She also stressed that it wasn't necessarily a failed mission after NASA delayed the astronauts' return to Earth, citing mechanical issues with the reusable aircraft's service module.
Williams continued:
“I wouldn’t characterize as they failed us. I would characterize it as, there was a huge team working together diligently to try to weigh all the risks of putting people in a spacecraft for the very first time with brand-new systems."
Wilmore touched on the false narrative pushed by Republican President Donald Trump and conservatives that he and Williams were left "stranded" out in space after former Democratic President Joe Biden "abandoned" them.
Wilmore clarified that “In the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck."
He continued:
“OK, in certain respects, we were stuck. In certain respects, maybe we were stranded. But based on how they were couching this, that we were left, forgotten, and all that, we were nowhere near any of that, at all.”
“Is Boeing to blame and culpable? Sure. Is NASA to blame? Are they culpable? Sure. Everybody has a piece in it,” he said, adding, “There are some things I should have asked that I didn’t know I needed to ask.”
Here's more from the joint interview.
Williams and Wilmore stated they would both be happy to go back up for another space walk but would still prioritize allowing other astronauts who haven't been given the opportunity first.
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