WASHINGTON, D.C. — One of the key moments during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday featured President Donald Trump honoring 100-year-old Tuskegee airman Charles McGee.
Trump introduced McGee’s great-grandson Iain Lanphier as someone who wants to continue in that tradition, but as a part of the newly formed Space Force.
“Iain has always dreamed of going to space,” Trump said. “He was first in his class and among the youngest at an aviation academy. He aspires to go to the Air Force Academy, and then, he has his eye on the Space Force. As Iain says, ‘most people look up at space, I want to look down on the world.'”
Following those remarks, Trump touted work done to make Space Force a reality. That earned a thumb’s up from U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks), who was in attendance in the House chamber for Trump’s address.
During a sit-down interview conducted in his congressional office that aired on Huntsville radio WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show,” Rogers, an outspoken proponent of Space Force’s creation, discussed Trump’s remarks and the progress being made with Space Force.
The Calhoun County Republican congressman praised the bipartisan cooperation for Space Force, noting the rare nature of bipartisanship in this era of politics on Capitol Hill.
“They sure are,” Rogers said. “We’ve worked on this for five years — very bipartisan, one of the few bipartisan things that has happened around here, and it is a real national security imperative. We passed this out of the House two-and-a-half years ago. And the Senate, with the Air Force pushing them, fought against it. President Trump embracing it put new wind into the sails of this initiative. In fact, now it is the law. I’m very pleased he has a new Secretary of the Air Force who is fully, 100% in support of making this a very capable new service. And in fact, the existing chief of staff of the Air Force, who had been an opponent of this up until about six months ago, is now 110% in support of it. That’s important because the Space Force is a separate service in the Department of the Air Force. All shoulders are pushing in the same direction now.”
Rogers prefaced his praise by reminding listeners these were the very early stages of Space Force.
“I emphasize to people all the time,” he explained. “This is a multi-year process. This first legislation that was signed into law by the president just stands up the bare skeleton of this new service. For the next four to five years, we’re going to be layering more meat on the bones to build up this new service. But it is going to be a very capable service that will hopefully help us retake the command of space away from the Chinese, who are surpassing us right now.”
Regarding McGee and Lanphier, Rogers said such enthusiasm was cause for excitement but advised the public to have realistic expectations regarding Space Force.
“I hear that all the time,” Rogers added. “That’s one of the exciting things about the Space Force — young people are excited about being a part of this new service because it’s a cool service. Now, a lot of them, unfortunately, think of this as being like Star Trek. And it may one day be. Right now, it’s about military satellites — the satellites that guide our missiles, that we use for command and control of our nuclear weapons, that we use for positioning troops — a whole host of things. We have to have those up there, and we have to be capable. But I have no doubt down the road one day there will be a Space Force that has people going into space. Right now, I want people to understand this is about military satellites.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.
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