In a situation where everyone has an incentive to lie, there's no reason to believe anyone.

Musk and Trump have a history of exaggarating, to say it lightly, but NASA, like most of the government entities, hasn't been transparent with their internal processes either.

I see no reason to trust either of them.

> In a situation where everyone has an incentive to lie, there's no reason to believe anyone.

There is only one side with an incentive to lie, and that is only because they started lying and now they cannot stop without losing face.

Yes. Kind of.

Imagine you have two friends. Both are known to be the kind of people who eat off of other people’s plates.

You go to dinner with both of them. And while you’re distracted, some food fries disappear from your plate.

At this point, it’s similar. Since both friends steal food, it could be either.

Except, you’ve actually been to dinner many times with both. And you actually know a little more. You know that friend A always takes some of your fries. And friend B has always preferred snatching the croutons from your salad. But right now, you’ve got some missing fries. So… most likely the fry snatcher is at it again.

Coming back to the real world of liars. We’ve observed that trump and and musk stretch the truth to gain the trust/confidence/adoration of others. Braggart style behavior. NASA is less than transparent when it comes to motives behind various pork barrel things. But when it comes to “why’d something not work” they actually have a record of being mind numbing thorough and verbose.

So I personally have no problem pinning the less than desirable behavior around this on Trump and Musk.

It's more like, while you're distracted, your entire plate disappears and friend A tells you that friend C took it. Friend A is known to hate C and frequently makes up completely fabricated accusations about C's behavior. Friend A also frequently fabricates nonsense stories about all sorts of other things. Friend B is known for stealing croutons.

Honestly, the best evidence that Biden did not block a rescue mission is Trump and Musk saying that he did.

I don’t see much incentive for NASA to lie. Or rather, the incentive goes the other way. The “who cares about the truth” approach would be to curry favor with the new administration by agreeing with their claims.

There’s also a world of difference between “not transparent” and the Musk/Trump approach to the truth where you’re more likely to be correct if you just assume everything they say is false.