U.S. President Donald Trump said he’s directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs because of “tremendous interest.”
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social Thursday, 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 those highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.”
It was not immediately clear when the files would be released and what information they contain.
A screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post.
@RealDonaldTrump / Truth Social
Trump’s announcement comes after he accused former U.S. president Barack Obama of disclosing “classified information” after Obama suggested that aliens were real.
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Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One earlier Thursday, “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 said of Obama. “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”
He also told reporters that he doesn’t “have an opinion” on the prospect of extraterrestrial visitors on Earth.
“I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it,” he said.
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Trump says Obama made ‘big mistake’ by giving ‘classified information’ on existence of aliens
During a recent interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama said, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in … Area 51.”
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“There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said on the podcast released Saturday.
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Area 51 is a classified Air Force facility in Nevada that fringe theorists have speculated holds alien bodies and a crashed spaceship. CIA archives released in 2013 said it was a test site for top-secret spy planes.
Cohen then asked Obama what the first question he wanted answered was when he took office.
“Where are the aliens?” Obama responded.
In an Instagram post following the release of the podcast, Obama clarified his statement about aliens, writing, “I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify. 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 is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” Obama added.
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‘They’re real’: Barack Obama talks aliens, Area 51
Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life re-emerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked navy videos of unknown objects to the New York Times in 2017.
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The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a navy ship, were likely drones.
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In July 2022, the Pentagon created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.
An 18-page unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 said service members had made 485 reports of unidentified phenomena in the past year but 118 cases were found to be “prosaic objects such as various types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems.”
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That same month, Harvard academics suggested that aliens might be residing in an advanced technological civilization deep underground or in a base inside the moon.
A paper by researchers at Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program claimed that “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) could be living underground or on the moon, or even walking among humans.
The authors were fully aware that the report would raise eyebrows and likely be met with skepticism by the scientific community, but encouraged “consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.”
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Harvard physicist suggests interstellar object could be alien probe: ‘Very peculiar’
The study, titled The cryptoterrestrial hypothesis: A case for scientific openness to a concealed earthly explanation for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, provided four possible explanations for the ongoing “concern regarding UAPs.”
“Hypotheses for such phenomena tend to fall into two classes: a conventional terrestrial explanation (e.g., human-made technology), or an extraterrestrial explanation (i.e., advanced civilisations from elsewhere in the cosmos),” they said.
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“However, there is also a third minority class of hypothesis: an unconventional terrestrial explanation, outside the prevailing consensus view of the universe.”
— With files from Global News and The Associated Press
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