"We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short," Wilmore said, adding that from his standpoint, politics and played no role in NASA's decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10's arrival.
"That's what your nation's human spaceflight program's all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies, and we did that," he said.
The astronaut duo has been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the space station's other astronauts, and have remained safe, NASA has said.
The demands by Trump and Musk for an earlier return were an unusual intervention in NASA's human spaceflight operations. The mission previously had a target date of March 26, but NASA swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule with a different one that would be ready sooner.