US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he was directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs because of “tremendous interest”.
Trump made the announcement in a social media post hours after he accused former president Barack Obama of disclosing “classified information” when Obama recently suggested in a podcast interview that aliens were real.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I don’t know if they’re real or not”, and said of Obama, “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying”.
In a post on his social media platform Thursday night, Trump said he was directing government agencies to release 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”.
Obama, who made his comments in a podcast appearance over the weekend, later clarified that he had not seen evidence that aliens “have made contact with us”, but said, “statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there”.