Trump’s campaign has earthly problems. But he’s focusing on outer space.
Donald Trump is returning to one of his favorite subjects: outer space.
The former president on Monday said if elected, he’ll push to establish a Space National Guard, throwing his support behind a new proposal for part-time space personnel that the Biden administration opposes.
The surprise move by Trump puts the campaign spotlight on an issue that has governors of both parties — and National Guard leaders — at odds with the Pentagon and has divided Congress.
The pledge came during a speech at the National Guard Association of the United States’ annual conference in Detroit, in the battleground state of Michigan, where the Republican nominee attacked outgoing President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on a host of foreign policy and domestic issues — chief among them the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and border security.
During his address, the former president trumpeted the creation of the Space Force during his administration as “one of my proudest achievements” and argued the newest service now needs its own branch of the Guard.
“Now that Space Force is up and running, I agree with your leadership. You want this very badly, but I agree that the time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force,” Trump told the crowd to applause.
“As president, I will sign historic legislation creating a Space National Guard,” Trump added.
During his first term, Trump endorsed a proposal to spin off troops that perform space-related missions — such as protecting U.S. satellites and missile detection — into the Space Force, the first new branch of the military in seven decades that became a go-to line for Trump at his rallies.
By endorsing a new National Guard component specifically for the Space Force, Trump is siding with Guard leaders and executives from space-heavy states against Pentagon brass and the Biden administration in a contentious turf war over military assets.
Advocates argue the highly technical missions of the Space Force will draw heavily on part-time personnel with technical experience from their day jobs, but who don’t want to sign up full-time for the Space Force. Most of those personnel are now part of the Air National Guard, an arrangement proponents contend undermines the training, recruiting and funding for space personnel that could be fixed by giving the Space Force its own Guard outfit.
The approach is supported by top National Guard leaders, lawmakers and top leaders in both parties from states with space missions. Colorado Reps. Jason Crow, a Democrat, and Doug Lamborn, a Republican Trump supporter, sponsored the measure in the House while Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler from Harris’ home state of California are backing it in the upper chamber. Still, the Biden administration opposes it. The White House has argued creating a separate National Guard for just a few hundred space personnel would be costly and bureaucratic.
National Guard Association of the United States President Frank McGinn praised Trump’s commitment to a Space National Guard, which the advocacy group supports, following the former president’s speech.
“I am grateful for President Trump’s pledge to establish a Space National Guard should he be elected for another term. NGAUS has maintained for several years that a Space National Guard is the ideal supplement for the US Space Force,” McGinn said in a statement.
Like the Space Force before it, House lawmakers have passed bipartisan legislation to create a Space National Guard several times in recent years, but the proposals have never cleared the Senate, which has sided with Biden to quash it.
But just as with the Space Force, the backing of a potential Trump administration could put the proposal over the top. Trump said he spoke to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee who the former president considered to be his running mate, about the proposal. Rubio is the sponsor of legislation in the Senate to create a Space National Guard.
“Space Force has been very important,” Trump said. “When I did that, other people came in, they wanted to end it, and they were just hammered, because people realized how important. We were getting just destroyed in space, and now we’re leading.”
The Pentagon instead is pushing an alternative proposal to shift Air National Guard units that perform space missions into the Space Force without creating a new part-time organization, a move that brass hope will save money and keep the fledgling service lean. That effort has been opposed by all 50 state governors and was significantly watered down by the House, though the Senate has again sided with the Biden administration.
Trump’s backing of the plan came as part of the broader barrage of attacks the Republican nominee and his campaign launched Monday against Biden and Harris over their administration’s military oversight. It was an attempt to use the anniversary of the attack outside Kabul’s airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and dozens more Afghans as a campaign cudgel.
Trump, who also moved to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the waning days of his presidency, claimed he would have done so “with dignity and strength” unlike Biden.
“Our country will never be safe again until we have fired those responsible for this disaster,” Trump said. “It gave us Russia going into Ukraine. It gave us [the] Oct. 7 attack on Israel, because it gave us lack of respect. We’re not respected. We were respected very much four years ago. We’re not respected now.”
“The voters are going to fire Kamala and Joe on Nov. 5, we hope,” he added. “And when I take office, we’ll ask for the resignations of every single official. We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
As Trump spoke in Michigan, his campaign was simultaneously holding a call with reporters in which his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a former U.S. Marine who served a tour in Iraq, members of Congress and a handful of Gold Star family members whose loved ones were killed in the Kabul attack, criticized the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and demanded accountability from Harris.
“Nobody expects perfection from our government,” Vance said. “But we do expect accountability.”
Gold Star family members claimed they have not had any direct outreach from Harris, particularly since she launched her campaign in late July.
“The Biden-Harris administration — there’s never even been condolences. They just want to pretend it didn’t happen. They want to take credit for ending the war, but they don’t want to take any responsibility for the way it all went down,” said Cheryl Jules, whose niece, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, was killed in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.
“Our servicemen and women deserve better than that,” said Jules, who was one of the Gold Star family members to address the Republican National Convention last month. “They deserve to know that there’s a commander in chief, like President Trump, who’s going to respect them and protect them.”
Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement through the White House, Harris said she mourns the servicemembers who were killed at the airport.
“I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families and I will always honor their service and sacrifice,” Harris said, in an echo of her remarks at the Democratic National Convention just days ago.
Harris also defended the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, saying the president “made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war.” And she herself vowed to “never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people and the homeland.”
Other Democrats leaped to the administration’s defense by blasting Trump’s own dealings in Afghanistan and with American troops. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) argued on X that “Trump owns the Afghanistan withdrawal. He cut a bad deal with the Taliban … forcing Biden to clean it up.”
