President Donald Trump on Thursday accused former President Barack Obama of revealing classified information when he recently said aliens are real, though Trump offered no evidence to support the allegation.
“He took it out of classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Georgia. “He made a big mistake.”
The comments stem from an interview Obama gave to podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, released Saturday, in which he was asked about the existence of extraterrestrials.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s some enormous conspiracy and it was hidden from the president of the United States,” Obama said.
Area 51, a highly classified Air Force facility in Nevada, has long been the focus of speculation that it houses alien bodies or a crashed spaceship. CIA archives released in 2013 revealed it was primarily used as a test site for top-secret spy planes.
There was no indication in his remarks that the former president relied on classified information.
“I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!” Obama said in an Instagram post Sunday.
In the post, Obama explained his belief that aliens exist, citing the statistical odds of life beyond Earth because the universe is so vast. He added that the chances of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth were low, given the distance. On Thursday, Trump said, “I don’t know if they’re real or not” when asked whether he had seen evidence that aliens exist.
The White House said it had nothing to add to the president’s comments. Obama’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon in recent years has undertaken a push to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects, and senior military leaders said in 2022 they found no evidence to suggest aliens have visited Earth or crash-landed here.
A 2024 Pentagon report said U.S. government investigations since the end of World War II have found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology and that most sightings were misidentified ordinary objects or phenomena.
