where richard branson is speaking on stage. an enormous thank you to our incredible spaceship pilots. and to our mother ship pilots. i think they must i don t know where they are. if they re here, they should come and join us on stage. anyway, beth, collin and sirisha, if you didn t know who they were. anyway, thanks to all of you for being here at space port america. it s hot. thank you for standing out here. the space port is the most stunning building. you come in the morning and see this thing emerging from the desert. i think it could be one of the ten wonders of the world. so awesome to arrive on a bicycle across this beautiful
to calibrate how much he hugs trump, he is seen as a pro trump guy, but how much he keeps him at arm s length so he can if he runs in 2024, get those suburban white voters with college degrees back into the republican column. that s who abandoned republicans that gave president biden that big edge in 2020. so we heard donie talk about how the conservatives attending the cpac conference still believe false claims about widespread voter fraud costing trump the election, but many top gop leaders are also touting the big lie at this gathering. trump is not alone. take a listen. there s fraud in every election. since the beginning of time. including in america. and we ought to all agree, democrats and republicans, that nobody should vote who is not legally allowed to vote. and unfortunately, in the last presidential election, because they didn t check those signatures, we had massive
so there are still dozens of individuals that must be recovered here from this site as this recovery enters the third week, lyndsay. vaughn hillyard, incredible hearing you describe the trucks on the highway there. vaughn, thank you for your reporting. all right, we re going to get back to our top story, the new space race. we re going to head right now closer to space port america. our tom costello who in essence is in the bubble, as they say. what a beautiful backdrop there in space port, america. tom, of course, is our aviation and transportation correspondent. tom, you just spoke with richard branson some five days ago, highly anticipating this launch. give us a sense of what sort of emotions you get or sense he s going through right now. reporter: first of all, i talked to him on monday. we had an exclusive sit-down interview with him. he was just bursting with excitement and pride as he showed us a firsthand walk about
that s what it s been the last few days. moments ago we am a tarantula crawl by on the platform. the excitement building here at space port america. this is not a situation where the for people in the neighboring communities are going to come and watch. this is pretty much invitation only on the scene. as you can see, we have the mother ship eve with unity below it now taxiing the runway. a two-mile runway built specifically just for this. just for commercial space flight. and now preparing to take off. the chief pilot as we ve said, david mckay, who is a veteran of the royal air force, and then you ve got his copilot, his fellow test pilot also there with him in the cockpit. and as you know, we ve mentioned his name many times and his name is i m michael masucci. reporter: thank you, sir. he has a great nickname.
floating weightless for 3 to 4 minutes? you get the same effect and regardless, the faa is still going to give those folks the civilian astronaut wings, if you will. i have to say, as you know, anything that has a virgin brand on is or richard branson brand on it, they tend to do it big and they ve certainly done this one up big. they ve got a heck of a performance on the stage here. stephen colbert is also going to be helping to emcee the online presence here. they ve got music playing. it s going to be quite an experience on the ground. looks like they re rolling. let s watch, it s rolling. this is vss unity on the mother ship eve getting ready. we believe it s got good speed to it so it looks like this might be the take-off roll on a two-mile runway at space port america. let s watch this go. and we have left-off of the vss unity on the mother ship eve