There were a couple people British primatologist Jane Goodall wanted to send into space.
Goodall, who died last week at age 91, listed those people on the previously recorded Netflix’s “Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall,” The Hill reported.
“There are people I don’t like. And I would like to put them on one of [Elon] Musk’s spaceships and send them all off to the planet he’s sure he’s going to discover,” Goodall said.
Host Brad Falchuk asked if Musk was one of the people she wanted to send into space.
“Oh, absolutely, he’d be the list. And you can imagine who I’d put on that spaceship,” she replied.
She then went on to name names.
“Along with Musk, would be Trump, and some of Trump’s real supporters. And then I would put [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in there, and I would put President Xi,” she said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. “I’d certainly put [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in there.”
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In 2016, Goodall likened Trump’s approach to political debates to chimpanzees performing dominance rituals.
“In many ways, the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” Goodall told “The Atlantic” then.
“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks,” she said.
Some were surprised with what Goodall said, including, Maryam Cooley, founder and CEO of Cooley Enterprises LLC, a company focused on a low-carbon future.
“Frankly, I am surprised by Jane’s comments, especially about blasting Elon off into space,” she posted on X. “They felt unlike her. She always stood for honoring all forms of life, even those whom she disagreed with and considered flawed, difficult, or indifferent to nature’s earthly inhabitants.”
“Jane’s last words for a ‘launch list’ wishing to ship people off to space, even symbolically, contradict the spirit of universal compassion that she embodied most of her life. It honestly felt jarring, even as a joke,” Cooley posted.
“I believe Jane’s frustration stemmed from deep concern, not to exile, but to provide perspective. She understood that power untethered from empathy drifts off course in protecting life on planet Earth as our single fragile home with so many diverse and beautiful inhabitants looking to share, thrive, and evolve in it,” Cooley wrote.
“The truth is that compassion comes from transforming hearts, not from ejecting them off to space,” she concluded.
Former President Joe Biden awarded Goodall the Presidential Medal of Freedom before he left office earlier this year.
