Donald Trump has announced that he is ordering the Defense Department and other agencies to release files they have on the search for extraterrestrial life.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump said he will ask the Secretary of Defense and others to “begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to extraterrestrial and extraterrestrial life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).”
Comments made by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama went viral last weekend after podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen asked the former president if aliens were “real.”
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama responded. “And they’re not being housed in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they’re hiding it from the president of the United States.”
On Thursday, Trump accused Obama of leaking “classified information.”
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t know if they’re true or not,” and of Obama, “I might get out of trouble by declassifying him.”
Obama clarified earlier this week that he had not seen evidence that aliens had “made contact with us,” but that “statistically, the universe is so vast, the odds are there’s life there.”
Trump told reporters Thursday when it came to the prospect of alien visitors: “I don’t have an opinion on that. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.”
Trump’s daughter-in-law Laura Trump indicated she was open to talking about it this week, however, when she said on a podcast that the president was open to a speech on aliens he would give “at the right time.”
That was news to the White House. Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt responded with a laugh when asked about it Wednesday and told reporters, “The speech on aliens would be news to me.”
Public interest in UFOs and the possibility that the government is hiding extraterrestrial life secrets re-emerged in 2017 after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unidentified objects to the US media. The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearing on UFOs in 50 years. Floating above the Navy ship could be drones.
The Pentagon has since promised more transparency on the issue. Declassified information shows that the vast majority of UFO reports made by the military go unsolved, but most of those identified are benign.
With the Associated Press
