President Trump just announced that he will direct the Department of Defense and other agencies to release their files about UFOs and “alien and extraterrestrial life” to the public, as reported by The Hill. This is a huge move, and it’s definitely going to get people talking about what’s really out there.
“Based on the tremendous interest shown,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “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. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later jumped on X, describing Trump’s announcement as “OUT OF THIS WORLD NEWS.” This comes just hours after President Trump criticized former President Obama for allegedly sharing classified information about whether alien life exists. Trump said Obama was “not supposed to be doing that” before telling Peter Doocy that Obama doesn’t “know if they’re real or not.” He even suggested he might “get him out of trouble by declassifying” the information himself.
Obama had previously stated that extraterrestrial life was real, but that he had not “seen them”
Obama later clarified that his comments were made in the light-hearted spirit of a speed round of questions, explaining that “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.” It sounds like he was just having a bit of fun, but it clearly caught President Trump’s attention.
Adding another layer to this, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, mentioned that he has a prepared speech detailing extraterrestrial life and spaceships. She shared this intriguing tidbit on the “Pod Force One” podcast, saying, “I’ve heard kind of around, I think my father-in-law has actually said it, that there is some speech that he has, that I guess at the right time, I don’t know when the right time is, he’s going to break out and talk about and it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life.”
However, Leavitt later said this was “news to me,” so it’s interesting to see if that speech ever surfaces. The topic of extraterrestrial life and UAP has been a hot one for years, captivating both lawmakers and the public. You might remember the House Oversight Committee holding a hearing in 2023 with former military intelligence officer and whistleblower David Grusch.
Grusch made some pretty bold claims, saying that the Pentagon and other agencies have been running a “multi-decade” program to reverse-engineer nonhuman technology recovered from crash sites. He even claimed to have been part of one of these retrieval programs. The Pentagon, for its part, denies his claims.
Before that, back in 2022, a House Intelligence subcommittee held the first congressional hearing on UFOs in over 50 years. During that hearing, lawmakers listened to officials who were overseeing a Pentagon task force specifically investigating UAP.
Published: Feb 20, 2026 10:30 am