President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of revealing classified information about extraterrestrial life, igniting a political firestorm that culminated in Trump directing federal agencies to release government files on aliens and UFOs.
Trump made the explosive accusation Thursday aboard Air Force One, responding to Obama’s recent podcast comments in which the former president suggested aliens are “real.” When Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked Trump whether he had seen evidence of nonhuman visitors to Earth, the president pivoted to attacking his predecessor.
“He gave classified information, he’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump told reporters. “He made a big mistake.”
The controversy erupted after Obama appeared on the “No Lie” podcast with Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday. During a rapid-fire question segment, Cohen asked point-blank: “Are aliens real?” Obama didn’t hesitate, saying they’re real but he hasn’t seen them and they’re not being kept at Area 51—unless, he quipped, there’s some “enormous conspiracy” that hid it from the president.
The comments ricocheted across social media, prompting Obama to issue a clarification Sunday on Instagram. The former president, who served from 2009 to 2017, explained he was playing along with the speed-round format and meant only that life likely exists somewhere in the vast universe given its statistical immensity—not that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials. He stressed he saw “no evidence” during his presidency that aliens had made contact.
The clarification did little to quell Trump’s criticism. When pressed about his own views on aliens, Trump demurred, saying he doesn’t know if they’re real and never talks about the subject. But he offered to “help” Obama by declassifying the information, while noting that many people believe in extraterrestrial life.
Hours after the Air Force One exchange, Trump posted on Truth Social announcing he would direct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other relevant departments to identify and release government files on aliens, extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and UFOs—citing “tremendous interest” in the topic.
The clash between the current and former presidents underscores their longstanding political rivalry. Trump’s accusations about classified information carry particular irony given his own history with sensitive documents. FBI agents seized boxes of materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August 2022, leading to a 40-count federal indictment. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July 2024, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
In September 2022, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that presidents can declassify documents simply by “thinking about it”—a claim that legal experts widely dismissed as absurd.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared caught off guard Wednesday when asked about reports that Trump planned to deliver a speech about aliens. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump had suggested on a podcast that the president has a speech on extraterrestrials ready to deliver “at the right time.” Leavitt laughed off the question, telling reporters, “A speech on aliens would be news to me.”
Public interest in UFOs surged in 2017 after The New York Times and Politico reported on leaked Navy videos showing unknown objects and revealed a secretive Pentagon program investigating pilot encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena. Congress held its first hearings on UFOs in more than 50 years in May 2022, and the Pentagon established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to collect military reports of unusual sightings.
A November 2024 Pentagon report to Congress documented 757 new reports of unidentified phenomena received between May 2023 and June 2024. Investigators resolved hundreds of cases as prosaic objects—balloons, birds, drones, and satellites—while many remained unresolved due to insufficient data. The report emphasized that AARO has discovered “no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.”
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who headed the Pentagon’s anomaly resolution office until December 2023, consistently maintained there was no evidence of programs attempting to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology. In a January 2024 op-ed for Scientific American, he attributed alien conspiracy theories to “circular reporting” among a small group of believers.
Trump expressed skepticism about UFO reports during his first term. In June 2019, he told ABC News he had received a brief meeting on Navy UFO sightings but said, “Do I believe it? Not particularly.”
What Trump’s administration will actually release about government knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena—if anything of substance—is anyone’s guess. Previous disclosures have shown most military UFO reports either go unsolved or turn out to have mundane explanations: weather balloons, Starlink satellites, and birds.
The BBC contacted Obama for comment but received no immediate response.