The fallout continues from what was billed as the “historic” Blue Origin flight that saw six women – including Lauren Sánchez, Katy Perry, and Gayle King – go to space on Monday.
Sánchez, Perry, and King were joined by film producer Kerianne Flynn, former aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and activist Amanda Nguyen for the 11-minute voyage, and the crew has been under fire from some unexpected critics for their out-of-touch perspective on the experience.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by The Free Press columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon to discuss the absurd way the women have spoken about the trip and the public mocking that ensued.
The Backlash
As Megyn lamented on Monday’s show, the narrative surrounding this trip was one of “female empowerment,” but she did not see much to celebrate. “I don’t feel empowered. If there had been six female astronauts going up, then, yes, okay,” she said. “But what did these women do? The one gal is engaged to a billionaire, and these are a bunch of celebrities she wanted to befriend.”
As it turns out, Megyn was not alone. Many female celebrities have vocally spoken out against the Blue Origin flight. Olivia Wilde shared a meme of Perry exiting the spacecraft with a caption that read, “Getting off a commercial flight in 2025.” She added the comment “Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess” on her Instagram Story.
Amy Schumer also took to Instagram to poke fun at the mission in a bit Ungar Sargon called the funniest the comedian has been in years. “So I’m going to space, and I’m so excited,” she said in a video. “Lauren Sánchez, Katy Perry and Amanda Nguyen have been my guiding lights through this whole journey, which I just got called to be part of this space team this morning. And I’m loving it. I’ve always wanted to go to space, and also I just have to say, How high were the people who came up with the name for space? Were they like, ‘What should we call it? It’s got so much, like, space.’”
Emily Ratajkowski expressed her dismay on TikTok, calling the whole situation “beyond parody.” She also took issue with the environmental impact. “You say that you care about Mother Earth, and it’s about Mother Earth, and you go up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that is single-handedly destroying the planet,” she claimed. “Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space. For what?”
Megyn said Olivia Munn “speaks for a lot of us” when she expressed her feelings alongside Jenna Bush Hager on Today. “I know this probably isn’t the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” the actress said. “What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous.”
The Defense
The Blue Origin crew has not taken kindly to the blowback, with Sánchez and King, in particular, trying to defend the excursion. The former said she gets “really fired up” when she hears the criticism.
“I would love to have them come to Blue Origin and see the thousands of employees that don’t just work here but they put their heart and soul into this vehicle,” Sánchez said. “So when we hear comments like that, I just say, ‘Trust me. Come with me. I’ll show you what this is about, and it’s, it’s really eye-opening.'”
King, meanwhile, suggested misogyny could be at play as she likened her experience to – wait for it – that of astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space.
KING: Please don’t call it a ‘ride’ that is not a friggin ride. Whenever a man goes up, you have never said to an astronaut, ‘Boy, what a ride.’ You know, we duplicated the same trajectory that Alan Shepard did back in the day. Pretty much. No one called that a ride. It was called a ‘flight.’ It was called a ‘journey’ because a ‘ride’ implies it is something frivolous or something that’s light hearted. There was nothing frivolous about what we did, and the machine that we were on, and what it took for the people to get that machine up and running, to get us up, and get us back down safely. So, you know, I’m very disappointed and very saddened by it.
She also claimed the trip was an inspiration to many. “What it’s doing to inspire other women and young girls, please don’t ignore that,” King continued. “I’ve had so many women and young girls reach out to me – and men too, by the way, men too – that say, ‘Wow, I never thought I could do that, but I see you doing it at this stage in my life. Who would have thunk it? Not me’ and how inspired they are.”
The Disconnect
Megyn said the attempted defense reveals just how out-of-touch the women are. “I’m still stuck in the fact that Gayle King actually used the word ‘astronauts’… You are there on a vanity project of Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, you’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve this,” she noted. “You’re sitting next to Katy Perry, and if you don’t want people to think it’s frivolous, Gayle, then don’t have the f-cking Kardashians and Oprah [Winfrey] craftside as you take off… That might have something to do with our reaction to this as a non-serious event and a PR stunt.”
In Ungar-Sargon’s view, the disconnect between the Blue Origin crew and its critics is not unlike the disconnect the left faces today. “They went to see space… they admired the universe, and what they were expecting was for us to admire the fact that they were rich enough and famous enough to have been granted this utterly, utterly vacuous experience from which they learned absolutely nothing,” she concluded. “This is the Democratic Party, right? It’s all acting; it’s all celebrity; it’s all ostentatious wealth.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ungar-Sargon by tuning in to episode 1,050 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.