During an interview with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen released last Saturday (February 14), former president Barack Obama didn’t shy away from the question, when asked whether extraterrestrials exist, he replied simply, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them.”
Donald Trump responded to Obama’s comments by suggesting the former president may have revealed classified information, saying Obama “gave classified information — he’s not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake.”
Trump later wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that, due to the tremendous public interest, he would direct the Secretary of War and other relevant departments and agencies to begin identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and UFOs.
Concerns about secrecy intensified when a massive public archive from The Black Vault, run by researcher and ufologist John Greenewald Jr., reportedly containing 3.8 million declassified U.S. government files, vanished just one day after Trump ordered the release of all UFO-related documents.
Critics, however, claim the move to release all files tied to UFOs and extraterrestrial contact is merely a distraction from other political controversies.
In the video below, Richard Dolan assesses what Obama actually said, why the reaction was wildly overblown, and why Trump’s instinctive response made the issue more interesting. More importantly, Richard examines the deeper structural problem behind UFO disclosure: a labyrinth of federal agencies, special access programs, and private defense contractors that may sit largely beyond presidential reach. This story is really power, secrecy, and what history tells us about how difficult it really is to break through the system.
In the end, many believe it may be the same old story, with little, if anything, about aliens truly being revealed… but who knows?