Former President Barack Obama reportedly scolded Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry after the NBA player joked that the moon landing was fake.
Rolling Stone reports that the former president sent an email rebuke to Curry after the NBA star appeared on a podcast and joked that the US moon landing never happened.
Curry and fellow NBA players Kent Bazemore, Andre Iguodala, and Vince Carter were interviewed on the "Wingin It" podcast in 2018, during which some of the players appeared to doubt that humans had ever been to the moon.
Once the topic had been broached, Curry agreed with the others, saying "I don't think so, either."
The players' seeming lack of belief that the US had reached the moon were met with criticism, including a statement from NASA offering the NBA star evidence that the historic event occurred.
Curry, speaking to Rolling Stone's Matt Sullivan, said the blowback included a "stern" and "direct" email from Mr Obama, who accused him of being reckless with his platform.
Mr Obama apparently said that humans had been to the moon, and pressed the NBA player to rectify the situation. After the pushback Curry put out a statement claiming he was joking.
"Obviously I was joking when I was talking on the podcast," he said in the statement, before adding he would "one thousand per cent" take NASA up on its offer to talk about the moon mission with him.
Curry went on to say he’s going “to educate myself firsthand on everything that NASA has done and shine a light on their tremendous work over the years. And hopefully, people understand that education is power, informing yourself is power," he said at the time. "For kids out there that hang on every word that we say, which is important, understand that you should not believe something just because somebody says it. You should do your homework and understand what you actually believe."
He defended not speaking up sooner by claiming he was engaging in a "silent protest" over how "stupid it was" that people took his comment seriously.
Curry later held a 15-minute Instagram live stream featuring an interview with a NASA astronaut, and later auctioned a custom set of space-themed sneakers for $58,000. He gave the money to STEM education programs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Now, as per Curry, there is no bad blood between him and the former president. He said the two were friends, and said Mr Obama has even joked with him while golfing, saying "you won't believe what the aliens look like."
Moon landing hoax believers, like flat earthers and even QAnon adherents, believe that the US government is lying about the nature of reality to some nefarious end.
