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Jared Isaacman is skeptical of unknown numbers — even if they’re supposedly coming from the White House.
When President Donald Trump’s transition team approached Isaacman about leading NASA, the billionaire astronaut initially didn’t take the effort seriously. Isaacman remembered being offered the job on an episode of the “Shawn Ryan Show” that aired September 8.
In late November, a friend from a previous job told him people were passing around his name for a job in the administration. Then, while running in Central Park, he said he had a missed call and a message from a number he didn’t recognize.
“It was like, ‘Would you be interested in serving in DJT’s administration?” Isaacman said on the podcast. “And I deleted it because I was like, if it was not a scam, it would be just a little bit more legit than this.”
After the old friend reached out again, saying the administration was trying to reach him, Isaacman said he realized his mistake. He said he soon got on the phone with Howard Lutnick, who is now Trump’s commerce secretary but had been running his transition team at the time, about leading NASA. The next day, he said he was meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
“Shook my hand at the end of the meeting and said, ‘You got the job,'” Isaacman said of his meeting with the president. He thinks Trump liked him in part because he was a “political newcomer.” Trump formally nominated Isaacman to lead NASA in December.
In May, however, the president rescinded Isaacman’s nomination because of “prior associations.” Isaacman has donated to Democrats throughout his career, according to OpenSecrets. He has also flown on two SpaceX missions and has ties to Elon Musk.
Musk left his role at the Department of Government Efficiency shortly before Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination, which Isaacman said likely contributed to his ousting.
“I think there was a very widely covered falling out between some pretty important people,” he said on the podcast. “And I became a good target as a parting shot, I think, in that whole divorce.” He said he didn’t take any of it personally.
On an episode of the “All-In” podcast that aired in June, Isaacman said he didn’t think his prior political donations were the true meaning behind the withdrawal. In the episode, he described himself as “somewhat of a moderate” and said he leaned right. Representatives for Isaacman did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The “real shame” of his nomination, Isaacman said on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” is that NASA does not have a permanent administrator (Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is the interim administrator). If he had been confirmed as NASA’s leader and had to cut the budget, Isaacman said he would have focused on internal bureaucracy, in part.
“It’s creating a hierarchy that serves the hierarchy,” he said on the podcast. “We certainly need management and leadership, but we need to empower the best and brightest to get the damn mission done.”
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