President Donald Trump waves after stepping off Air Power One, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on return from a visit to Georgia.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump mentioned Thursday that he is directing the Pentagon and different authorities companies to determine and launch information associated to extraterrestrials and UFOs due to “great curiosity.”
Trump made the announcement in a social media put up hours after he accused former President Barack Obama of revealing “categorised data” when Obama lately steered in a podcast interview that aliens have been actual.
Trump advised reporters aboard Air Power One, “I do not know in the event that they’re actual or not,” and mentioned of Obama, “I’ll get him out of bother by declassifying.”
In a put up on his social media platform Thursday evening, Trump mentioned he was directing authorities companies to launch information associated “to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all different data related to those extremely advanced, however extraordinarily attention-grabbing and essential, issues.”
Obama, who made his feedback in a podcast look over the weekend, later clarified that he had not seen proof that aliens “have made contact with us,” however mentioned, “statistically, the universe is so huge that the chances are good there’s life on the market.”
Trump advised reporters Thursday that when it got here to the prospect of extraterrestrial guests: “I haven’t got an opinion on it. I by no means discuss it. Lots of people do. Lots of people imagine it.”
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump steered this week that he was prepared to discuss it, nevertheless, when she mentioned on a podcast that the president had a speech ready to ship on aliens that he would give on the “proper time.”
That was information to the White Home. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded with fun when she was requested about it Wednesday and advised reporters, “A speech on aliens can be information to me.”
Public curiosity in unidentified flying objects and the potential of the federal government hiding secrets and techniques of extraterrestrial life remerged within the public consciousness after a bunch of former Pentagon and authorities officers leaked Navy movies of unknown objects to The New York Occasions and Politico in 2017. The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to carry the primary hearings on UFOs in 50 years in Might 2022, although officers mentioned that the objects, which gave the impression to be inexperienced triangles floating above a Navy ship, have been seemingly drones.
Since then the Pentagon has promised extra transparency on the subject. In July 2022 it created the All-Area Anomaly Decision Workplace, or AARO, which was meant to be a central place to gather reviews of all navy UFO encounters, taking on from a division job pressure.
In 2023, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the pinnacle of AARO on the time, advised reporters he did not have any proof “of any program having ever existed as a to do any type of reverse engineering of any type of extraterrestrial (unidentified aerial phenomena).”
The knowledge that has been made public exhibits that the overwhelming majority of UFO reviews made by the navy go unsolved however the ones which might be recognized are largely benign in nature.
An 18-page unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 mentioned service members had made 485 reviews of unidentified phenomena up to now yr however 118 circumstances have been discovered to be “prosaic objects comparable to numerous sorts of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial techniques.”
“You will need to underscore that, so far, AARO has found no proof of aliens, exercise, or know-how,” the report pressured.
