Another Trump campaign ad in the spotlight

The Trump campaign took down a video late Thursday trumpeting NASA’s return to human spaceflight, after harsh criticism that it was politicizing the event and violating NASA advertising rules.

The video featured Trump watching last week’s launch from the Kennedy Space Center along with the slogan “Make Space Great Again” and historic footage from the Apollo era.

On Twitter, Karen Nyberg, a former astronaut and wife of Doug Hurley, who was carried to the International Space Station by the SpaceX launch, blasted the advertisement, saying she found “it disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong.”

  WaPo

So, not a Trump supporter?

But Internet posts are hard to delete forever; the ad surfaced on another YouTube page.

Of course. It will get around to all the MAGA base.

“Astronauts or employees who are currently employed by NASA cannot have their names, likenesses or other personality traits displayed in any advertisements or marketing material,” [NASA] rules say.

[...]

An online petition urging the campaign to remove the ad had more than 7,000 signatures by Friday. “NASA and the space industry as a whole have long tried to stay out of politics, and, until this Administration, that goal was at least partly attained,” the petition read.

NASA goes to great lengths to avoid endorsing any ideology or product, even going so far as to call the M&Ms astronauts gobble in space “candy-coated chocolates” out of fear of appearing to favor one brand of candy.

[...]

“Watching the ad, I was reminded of Richard Nixon at the time of Apollo 11,” said John Logsdon, a space historian and a professor emeritus at George Washington University. “He had nothing to do with Apollo 11; he just happened to be the president when it happened. But he wrapped himself in the event. And never once mentioned Kennedy.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.