President Donald Trump has reacted to Barack Obama’s comments that aliens are real.
Claiming his presidential predecessor overstepped national security rules, Trump, 79, told Fox News on Thursday, February 19 that Obama “gave classified information.”
“He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump added. “I don’t know if they’re real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information.”
Trump said he didn’t “have an opinion” on whether extraterrestrial life exists, noting, “I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.”
Speaking to reporters, Trump then hinted that he planned to release any government files related to extraterrestrial life.
“I may get [Obama] out of trouble by declassifying,” Trump told Fox News.
Later taking to social media, Trump again claimed he intended to declassify information surrounding the potential existence of aliens.
“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters,” Trump said in the social media post.
Referencing aliens while speaking to political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen on February 13, Obama, who served as the 44th President of the U.S. from 2009 to 2017, claimed, “They’re real.”
Obama stated that although he believes extraterrestrial life exists, he has not personally encountered any evidence that confirms it.
“But I haven’t seen them,” he continued. “They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility — unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”
Two days later, Obama clarified his remarks via an Instagram post after the comments were widely reported on.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of [Cohen’s] speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” he wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low.”
Obama concluded, “I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
In September 2025, Congress held a hearing in which House members questioned five witnesses — including former military members — about their alleged encounters with “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” or UAPs.
“I’m here to provide a first-hand account of what I saw,” Alexandro Wiggins, a member of the U.S. Navy, testified at the time, alleging he saw a UAP on February 15, 2023, while aboard the USS Jackson off the southern California coast.
Wiggins insisted that what he witnessed flying overhead was “not consistent with conventional aircraft or drones.”
Appearing on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2021, Obama said he wanted to know about aliens when he became president of the United States.
“The truth is, that when I came into office, I asked, ‘Is there a lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?’” he said on the talk show.
