President Trump on Thursday awarded Elon Musk and five other technology moguls the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
During a technology summit, dubbed the “New Golden Age Summit” at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, Trump awarded the medals and highlighted his agenda for American innovation, “super intelligence,” and space exploration.
Trump also awarded the National Medal of Science to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su. He awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, Michael Dell, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
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Trump personally handed out the awards. Musk received the award “for engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligent systems, communications, and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing.”
President Trump gave a long introductory speech, praising Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, during which he noted that “SpaceX saved NASA from relying on foreign nations to send our astronauts into space.”
Trump described Musk as “an industrial titan, a brilliant engineer, and one of the greatest technology founders to ever live.” Trump further called him a “national treasure” and “our modern-day Thomas Edison.”
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Transcript:
We honor an industrial titan, a brilliant engineer, and one of the greatest technology founders to ever live. His name is Elon Musk. Quite honestly, there is nobody like him. Few Americans in history have done more to advance America’s national interest than Elon. In one field after another, his genius and determination have made science-fiction into reality, and that is so true.
Elon founded SpaceX with his life savings in 2002 and created the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit in the face of vanishingly impossible odds. Nobody thought it was possible to do the things he’s doing and in so many different ways. SpaceX saved NASA from relying on foreign nations to send our astronauts into space, and I want to congratulate SpaceX on the safe return of Crew 12 from the International Space Station just a few hours ago. Congratulations!
We wanted to make sure. Could you imagine? If things didn’t work out so well, it would be not a very happy moment. I wonder if he’d be here. I think he might not be here, but it always works out well for Elon, right? We’re proud of you. Very proud of you. National treasure.
Under Elon’s leadership, SpaceX has also developed Starship, the largest rocket in history, which is caught out of thin air and for rapid reuse, and it’s the first time anyone’s ever seen anything quite like it. They also created the largest ever communication satellite network, Starlink. And in North Carolina, I will tell you personally because I was involved, we had a hurricane, one of the great water hurricanes of all time — delivered more water than at any time that we can remember or in record. It saved hundreds of lives by calling Elon.
I remember the governor said, “Sir, is there any way, do you know a man named Elon Musk?” I said, “I happen to know him. Yes.” “We need Starlink” because the water was so deep that many islands were created, and the people had no way of getting off those islands, and they had no communication. And they said, “we cannot get anybody to help us.” And I called up Elon, and it was like impossible to get this equipment, and he had it there in a matter of hours and saved hundreds of lives. He saved hundreds of lives in North Carolina, so I never forgot that experience. It was a terrible time, and the job he did, and he acted so fast. Everybody said they were impossible to get. So, thank you, Elon, for that very special moment.
In addition, Elon created Tesla, the first successful new car manufacturer in over 75 years, producing the first commercially viable electric cars with the first consumer self-driving technology.
And interestingly, when you mentioned Tesla, my uncle, Dr. John Trump, was commissioned by the United States government to do a report on Nikola Tesla. They wanted to know: Was he real or not real? Was he a true genius or not? My uncle, after a fairly short period of time determined that he was a true and great genius, and that he was real in every single way. Otherwise, you’d have to change the name of the car company. You wouldn’t want to be associated.
See now, if I did the report, Elon, I might say, “he wasn’t that good.” But my uncle was a different kind of a person than I am, and he gave Tesla the highest report. He said he was a true, great genius. So, very nice.
Through Neuralink, Elon is also restoring sight, speech, and motion to those who cannot see, talk, or move, and he turned SpaceX AI into one of the world’s leaders in superintelligence. Elon is our modern-day Thomas Edison, and Elon, I want to congratulate you.
You’re my friend, and all of that. But you are a very, very special guy. Thank you very much, and congratulations, Elon. Great job.
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