In a podcast interview released over the weekend, Obama described a 2004 incident involving unexplained aerial objects near the U.S. Navy as “not knowing exactly what was going on,” and said some of the information discussed was classified. Trump responded on social media, saying Obama’s remarks were inaccurate and that the former president should not have made claims about classified material on a public forum.
Trump announced that he would direct War Secretary Pete Hegseth and other relevant departments and agencies to start identifying and declassifying records related to unidentified aerial phenomena, UFOs, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He framed this decision as a response to the growing public interest in these topics.
“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
During a flight on Air Force One, Trump criticized Obama for suggesting that aliens might be real, calling the statement a “big mistake” and accusing him of revealing classified information about potential non-human visitors to Earth.
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy pressed Trump on Obama’s claims, inquiring whether the current president has any evidence supporting the existence of non-human visitors on our planet.
“He gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump said. “I don’t know if they’re real or not. I can tell you, he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that – he made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information.”
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Former President Barack Obama appeared on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast on Saturday, where he was asked directly whether aliens exist.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said, according to Fox News.
Obama also rejected the claim that extraterrestrials are held at Nevada’s Area 51, saying there is no secret underground facility “unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
After his remarks sparked buzz online, Obama took to Instagram to offer an explainer.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention, let me clarify,” he wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Cohen also inquired about Obama’s very first question after he took office in January 2009 to begin his first term, which led to another reference to aliens.
“Uh, where are the aliens?” Obama joked.
Saturday’s appearance was not the first time Obama broached the subject. During a 2021 interview on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” he mentioned that after taking office, he investigated whether aliens were being studied in a secret laboratory and found out that they were not.
That said, Obama noted that investigators were looking into strange craft that appear to defy the known laws of earthly physics.
“There is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he said. “We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. I think people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
