Donald Trump is receiving backlash for appearing to give the middle finger to a female astronaut who corrected him during a press conference.
In a video shared online, Trump is seen calling NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch to congratulate them after they made an interstellar first by becoming the only all-women tandem to conduct a spacewalk.
During the call, which was captured by CSPAN cameras, Trump made a mistake. He said they were the first women to walk in space. But Meir corrected him by letting him know they aren’t the first women to walk in space but they are the first to complete an all-female spacewalk outside of the craft.
The first woman ever to walk in space (EVA) was Soviet Cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya on 25 July 1984. The first American Woman to Walk in Space was Kathryn Sullivan on 11 October 1984.
Trump said during the call: “You are amazing people; they’re conducting the first-ever female spacewalk to replace an exterior part of the space station.”
Meir quickly chimed in: “First of all, we don’t want to take too much credit because there have been many other female spacewalkers before us. This is just the first time that there has been two women outside at the same time.”
As she spoke, Trump appears to raise his middle finger to scratch his forehead and fix his hair.
People saw this as a deliberate move by the President of the United States to swear at the astronaut and they called him out on Twitter.
Shannon Watts posted the footage online, writing: “When gently corrected by one of the astronauts about how other women have spacewalked, Donald Trump uses his middle finger to “fix” his hair. How is this even real life?”
When gently corrected by one of the astronauts about how other women have spacewalked, Donald Trump uses his middle finger to "fix" his hair.
How is this even real life? pic.twitter.com/9bnj7XfY1m
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) October 21, 2019
A number of Twitter users also criticized Trump for his actions.
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