Trump ponders space in strange ceremony Out-of-this-world conspiracy theory: Kidnapped kids held on Mars

Washington — President Donald Trump’s ceremony Friday to bring back the National Space Council began to confuse people even before it took place.

It was, Trump would say, a big deal: an executive order to resurrect an advisory council that kick-started the first moon missions 60 years ago, went dormant in the 1990s, and could now lead astronauts into deep space — even Mars.

“At some point in the future, we’re going to look back and say how did we do it without space?” is how the president put it.

Yet the signing surprised many: The White House had not listed the ceremony on the president’s calendar, no one from NASA headquarters came, and the only female astronaut in attendance was left off the thank-you list.

Not to mention the president’s sometimes baffling remarks about the cosmos.

Vice President Mike Pence, who will be chairman of the new space council, introduced the president and others gathered in the Roosevelt Room.

“Especially the three American astronauts,” he said, listing NASA’s Alvin Drew, former astronaut David Wolf, and “the second man on the moon: the legendary Buzz Aldrin.”

“Welcome to the White House,” Pence said.

But he didn’t mention the former astronaut standing about five feet away — Sandy Magnus.

Trump would also name the three male astronauts without mentioning Magnus, an omission quickly noticed in the wider space community.

The situation for human beings on Mars is dire, and not just because the red planet’s atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and the average temperature is minus-81 degrees.

There’s also the issue of the child-trafficking ring operating in secret on the planet 33.9 million miles from earth, according to a guest on the Alex Jones Show.

“We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride,” Robert David Steele said Thursday during a winding, conspiratorial dialogue with Jones about child victims of sex crimes. “So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony.”

NASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Guy Webster, a spokesman for Mars exploration at NASA, told the Daily Beast that rumors about live humans on Mars are false.

“There are no humans on Mars,” he said. “There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there weren’t. There are, but there are no humans.”

Jones is known for peddling elaborate and debunked conspiracy theories on his radio show, which airs on 118 stations around the country and reaches millions of listeners. The site had 4.5 million unique page views in the past month and more than 5 million from mid-April to mid-May, according to Quantcast. His YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers.

Among his most well-known accusations in recent years is that the December 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 children and six adults were killed at a school in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax. Jones has claimed that the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and, more recently, promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which alleged that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was linked to a child-sex ring operating from the basement of a suburban Washington, D.C., pizzeria.

The theory originated on Reddit, where a user claimed hacked emails belonging to Clinton campaign manager John Podesta revealed evidence of an international child-sex ring. The key, the user alleged, was replacing the word “pizza” with “little boy.”

From that moment, the conspiracy theory took on a life of its own, culminating in a North Carolina man firing a military-style assault rifle inside the restaurant in December. Edgar Maddison Welch told investigators he was there to save abused children. Instead, he pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges in March and was sentenced to four years in prison last month.

Confronted about his Sandy Hook allegations during a controversial interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly last month, Jones hedged.

“I tend to believe that children probably did die there,” he told the anchor. “But then you look at all the other evidence on the other side. I can see how other people believe that nobody died there.”

On Thursday’s Infowars broadcast, Steele appeared to connect the kidnapped children being held captive on Mars to pedophile rings who allegedly use children for their youthful body parts and energy.

“Pedophilia does not stop with sodomizing children,” Steele said. “It goes straight into terrorizing them to adrenalize their blood and then murdering them. It also includes murdering them so that they can have their bone marrow harvested as well as body parts.”

“This is the original growth hormone,” Jones said.

“Yes, it’s an anti-aging thing,” Steele replied.