As the impeachment trial of Donald Trump continued in earnest on Friday, the president was boldly unveiling his new logo for the US Space Force.
After consultation with our Great Military Leaders, designers, and others, I am pleased to present the new logo for the United States Space Force, the Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military! pic.twitter.com/TC8pT4yHFT
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020
The massive defense spending bill Trump signed last month created the Space Force, a new branch of the military for which he has been pushing since early 2018.
Almost immediately after the design’s unveiling, people began pointing out the many similarities it bore to the logo for a certain fictional space fleet.
Trump just announced the new logo for the Space Force. The other is Star Trek Starfleet Command. pic.twitter.com/S7NeYdjR4C
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 24, 2020
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 24, 2020
George Takei, one of the stars of Star Trek, jumped into the conversation to suggest the Trump administration pay the cast “royalties”.
Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this... https://t.co/msYcJMlqjh
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 24, 2020
Takei also took a dig at the first lady, who appeared to plagiarize lines directly from a Michelle Obama speech for her own address as the 2016 Republican National convention.
I feel like Melania must have had a hand in copyi--I mean, designing this.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 24, 2020
Space Force, the first new military service since the creation of the Air Force in 1947, is part of Trump’s efforts to shore up American dominance in space.
“Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain,” Trump said during a signing ceremony in December, at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. “Among grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, and very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot.”
Amid the hullabaloo, some pointed out that the United States has been all about that “live long and prosper” life for a while now.
For those excitedly tweeting that Trump stole the Star Trek logo!!!!, the patch on the left was the existing Air Force Command logo.
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) January 24, 2020
The same one I wore as a Lieutenant in 2005. pic.twitter.com/mYb60YioBP
And the central feature of the logo wasn’t the only part of the design that looked … familiar.
You were so distracted by the Star Trek thing that you didn’t even notice they copy and pasted the stars from the NASA logo pic.twitter.com/ooqkph5GRt
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) January 24, 2020
