President Donald Trump has indicated that he is withdrawing the nomination of the individual he had selected to be the next leader of NASA. 

Trump made the announcement in a social media post over the weekend.

An added twist to this story is that the nominee-tech billionaire Jared Isaacman is an associate of Elon Musk, who just left the Trump administration - or, at least, left his special government employee post.

Moments ago on Truth Social, President Trump announced he has pulled the nomination of @rookisaacman Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator.

Isaacman was set to have his Senate Confirmation hearing this week.

The nomination was pulled over Isaacman’s previous donations to… https://t.co/0KKLWP4Egy pic.twitter.com/cpwieuhedC

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) June 1, 2025

He's out

The president kept his message, withdrawing Isaacman's nomination, fairly brief, but he did give an indication as to how he made this decision.

Trump wrote:

After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA. I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Apparently, after looking further into Isaacman, Trump and his team found that he is not "Mission aligned," or that he has viewpoints that are not in line with the Trump administration's policies.

This all is very sudden. In fact, Isaacman's Senate confirmation hearing was scheduled to take place this week.

Now, however, Trump will be looking for a new NASA leader.

More details

The New York Post reports:

Trump announced in December during the presidential transition that he had chosen Isaacman to be the space agency’s next administrator. Isaacman, 42, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight on Musk’s SpaceX company in 2021. He is the CEO and founder of Shift4, a credit card processing company. He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.

One of the big questions here is what exactly Trump found in Isaacman's background that he did not like.

Laura Loomer is reporting, "The nomination was pulled over Isaacman’s previous donations to Senate Democrats."

The president has yet to confirm whether or not this is true.

Perhaps the biggest question of all here is that, if Isaacman had skeletons in his closet, then why did Trump nominate him in the first place? It would appear that, at the very least, there is some kind of vetting issue here.