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President Donald Trump said connected Thursday (February 19, 2026) that he's directing the Pentagon and different authorities agencies to place and merchandise files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs due to the fact that of “tremendous interest.”
Mr. Trump made the announcement successful a societal media station hours aft helium accused erstwhile President Barack Obama of disclosing “classified information” erstwhile Mr. Obama precocious suggested successful a podcast interrogation that aliens were real.
Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t cognize if they’re existent oregon not," and said of Mr. Obama, “I whitethorn get him retired of occupation by declassifying.”
In a station connected his societal media level connected Thursday (February 19, 2026) night, Mr. Trump said helium was directing authorities agencies to merchandise files related “to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and immoderate and each different accusation connected to these highly complex, but highly absorbing and important, matters.”
Mr. Obama, who made his comments successful a podcast quality implicit the weekend, aboriginal clarified that helium had not seen grounds that aliens “have made interaction with us,” but said, “statistically, the beingness is truthful immense that the likelihood are bully there’s beingness retired there.”
Mr. Trump told reporters that erstwhile it came to the imaginable of extraterrestrial visitors: “I don’t person an sentiment connected it. I ne'er speech astir it. A batch of radical do. A batch of radical judge it.”
Mr. Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump suggested this week that helium was acceptable to talk astir it, however, erstwhile she said connected a podcast that the president had a code prepared to present connected aliens that helium would springiness astatine the “right time.”
That was quality to the White House. Press caput Karoline Leavitt responded with a laughter erstwhile she was asked astir it Wednesday and told reporters, “A code connected aliens would beryllium quality to me.”
Public involvement successful unidentified flying objects and the anticipation of the authorities hiding secrets of extraterrestrial beingness remerged successful the nationalist consciousness aft a radical of erstwhile Pentagon and authorities officials leaked Navy videos of chartless objects to The New York Times and Politico successful 2017. The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to clasp the archetypal hearings connected UFOs successful 50 years successful May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to beryllium greenish triangles floating supra a Navy ship, were apt drones.
Since past the Pentagon has promised much transparency connected the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, oregon AARO, which was intended to beryllium a cardinal spot to cod reports of each subject UFO encounters, taking implicit from a section task force.
In 2023, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the caput of AARO astatine the time, told reporters helium didn’t person immoderate grounds “of immoderate programme having ever existed arsenic a to bash immoderate benignant of reverse engineering of immoderate benignant of extraterrestrial (unidentified aerial phenomena).”
The accusation that has been made nationalist shows that the immense bulk of UFO reports made by the subject spell unsolved but the ones that are identified are mostly benign successful nature.
An 18-page unclassified study submitted to Congress successful June 2024 said work members had made 485 reports of unidentified phenomena successful the past twelvemonth but 118 cases were recovered to beryllium “prosaic objects specified arsenic assorted types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems.”
“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered nary grounds of extraterrestrial beings, activity, oregon technology,” the study stressed.
