U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday accused former President Barack Obama of revealing classified information when he recently said that aliens were real, but Trump didn’t cite any evidence to support the allegation.
“He took it out of classified information … He’s not presupposed to be doing that,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Georgia. “He made an enormous mistake.”
During an interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen released on Saturday, Obama was asked if aliens are real.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, they usually’re not being kept in … Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy they usually hid it from the president of america,” Obama said.
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Area 51 is a classified Air Force facility in Nevada that fringe theorists have speculated holds alien bodies and a crashed spaceship. CIA archives released in 2013 said it was a test site for top-secret spy planes.
There was no indication in his remarks that the previous 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 on Sunday.
Within the post, Obama explained his belief that aliens exist by saying the statistical odds of life beyond Earth were high since the universe is so vast. He added that the possibilities of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth were low given the gap.
On Thursday, Trump said, “I don’t know in the event that they’re real or not” when asked whether he had seen evidence that aliens exist.
The White House said it had nothing so as to add to the president’s comments. Obama’s office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Pentagon in recent times undertook a push to analyze reports of unidentified flying objects, and senior military leaders said in 2022 they found no evidence to suggest that aliens have visited Earth or crash-landed here.
A 2024 Pentagon report said U.S. government investigations for the reason that end of World War Two have found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology and most sightings were misidentified atypical objects and phenomena.