File image of US President Donald Trump. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
US President Donald Trump accused his predecessor Barack Obama on Thursday (Feb 19, 2026) of revealing “classified” information in his recent viral comments about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Mr. Obama, in a podcast interview released last week, declared that he believed in aliens but had not seen any evidence of them during his 2009-2017 presidency.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them and I’m not putting them in… Area 51,” he told host Brian Tyler Cohen, referring to the top-secret facility at the heart of many UFO conspiracies.
“There was no underground facility. Unless there was this enormous conspiracy, they hid it from the president of the United States.”
The comments quickly lit the internet ablaze, prompting the 64-year-old former president to issue an explanation.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast, the odds are so good, there’s life out there,” he wrote on Instagram.
“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances of us being visited by extraterrestrials are slim, and I’ve seen no evidence while I’ve been president that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Asked about the comments on Thursday (February 19, 2026), Mr. Trump told reporters, Mr.
Mr. He did not specify which part of Obama’s remarks were classified, but said “he made a big mistake.”
As for his own beliefs about aliens, Mr Trump, 79, said: “I don’t know if they’re true or not.”
Interest in UFOs, now known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), has been revived in recent years, with the US government investigating several reports of supernatural aircraft amid concerns that adversaries are testing highly sophisticated technology.
In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report saying it had no evidence that UAP was an alien technology, with many suspected sightings turning out to be just weather balloons, spy planes, satellites and other routine activities.
Published – February 20, 2026 04:49 am IST
