Commander Jared Isaacman of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, speaks at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. August 19, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
President Donald Trump has met with Jared Isaacman to discuss another nomination to lead NASA, a source familiar with the talks confirmed to CNBC’s Morgan Brennan.
Isaacman, who has close ties with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was at the White House in September for Trump’s dinner for tech power players. Musk did not attend.
After a fiery back-and-forth between Musk and Trump over government spending, the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination for the post, saying he was a “blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”
“I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on June 6.
Trump named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as interim head of NASA in July.
Isaacman, who declined to comment, was initially nominated in December to lead the space agency.
Bloomberg was first to report on the meetings between Isaacman and Trump.
Isaacman is a seasoned space traveller, having led two private spaceflights with SpaceX in 2021 and 2024. Shift4 has invested $27.5 million in SpaceX, according to a 2021 filing.
Isaacman stepped down as CEO from Shift4, the payments company he founded in 1999 at the age of 16, after his nomination was pulled, and now serves as executive chairman.
“Even knowing the outcome, I would do it all over again,” Isaacman wrote in a letter to investors announcing the change.
It now looks like he gets to do it all over again, with tensions between Musk and Trump cooling in the months since.
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