Donald Trump on Thursday accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of revealing “classified” information following viral comments the former president made about extraterrestrial life.
In a podcast interview released last week, Obama said he believes alien life could exist but stressed that he saw no evidence of it during his time in office from 2009 to 2017. Speaking to host Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama joked that aliens are not being hidden at Area 51, the secretive US military site long associated with UFO conspiracy theories.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51,” he said, dismissing the idea of a hidden underground facility unless an “enormous conspiracy” had kept it even from the president.
The remarks sparked widespread online debate, prompting Obama, 64, to later clarify his position on Instagram. He wrote that while the vastness of the universe makes the possibility of life elsewhere statistically plausible, the immense distances between solar systems make visits to Earth unlikely. He added that he saw no evidence during his presidency that extraterrestrials had contacted the United States.
Responding to the comments, Trump, 79, told reporters that Obama had “given classified information” and “made a big mistake,” though he did not specify which part of the remarks he believed was classified.
Asked about his own views, Trump said, “I don’t know if they are real or not.”
Interest in UFOs—now officially termed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)—has grown in recent years amid US government investigations into unexplained aerial sightings and concerns that foreign adversaries may be testing advanced technologies.
In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report concluding there was no evidence that UAP sightings were linked to alien technology, attributing many incidents to weather balloons, surveillance aircraft, satellites, and other conventional explanations.
