Trump Opens the X-Files: Government UFO and Alien Records Are Coming

It started with a casual question on a podcast. Within days, it had pulled a former president into a public dispute with his successor, reignited one of America’s most enduring conspiracies, and ended with a sitting commander-in-chief ordering the federal government to open its files on alien life. Few news cycles in recent memory have moved quite this fast, or in quite this direction.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon and other federal agencies to begin releasing government records related to extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and UFOs. What set it all in motion was a single offhand remark from former President Barack Obama on a podcast that, for a brief and chaotic moment, made it sound like he had just confirmed the existence of aliens.

A Viral Moment That Sparked a Presidential Order

Brian Tyler Cohen hosts a podcast. Most episodes come and go without much fuss. Last Saturday’s release was different.

Cohen had Obama on as a guest, and somewhere in a quickfire lightning round of questions, he asked the former president whether aliens are real. Obama, by his own later account, answered in the spirit of the fast-paced format.

“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 this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.

Social media did what social media does. Clips spread. Headlines followed. By the time the weekend was over, Obama’s words had reached an audience far beyond Cohen’s regular listeners, and they had caught the attention of the current occupant of the White House.

Trump Takes to Truth Social

"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… pic.twitter.com/3fKQ7wrSvi

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 20, 2026

On Thursday, Trump posted a sweeping directive on Truth Social. He framed it as a response to public demand, writing, “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.”

He closed the post with “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

What those files actually contain, when they will be released, and whether they will answer the questions that have long circulated in both fringe communities and mainstream political discourse remains unclear. No timeline accompanied the announcement, and no official briefing followed. For now, the order exists as a declaration of intent.

Obama’s Comment, and Its Fallout

I asked @BarackObama if aliens are real. pic.twitter.com/ZPw5zT9PfD

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) February 14, 2026

Before Trump took to Truth Social, he had a far sharper message for Obama. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One earlier on Thursday, Trump accused his predecessor of improperly revealing classified information during the podcast interview, without providing any evidence to support the claim.

“He made a big mistake,” Trump told reporters. “He took it out of classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that.”

For his part, Trump told reporters he had no firm opinion on whether aliens exist. “I don’t have an opinion on it,” he said. “I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.”

Obama’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s accusation. Reporters and analysts who reviewed the podcast interview found no indication that Obama had drawn on classified material. His remarks appeared to reflect a personal view about the statistical probability of life existing somewhere in the universe, not a disclosure of government intelligence.

Obama seemed to anticipate the confusion. Before Trump’s announcement, he posted a clarification on Instagram. “I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!” he wrote. He went on to explain that while the size of the universe made the existence of life elsewhere probable, the distances between solar systems made a visit to Earth far less likely.

Cohen, who faced some criticism online for not pressing Obama harder on the topic during the interview, had a pointed response once Trump’s directive went public. “Y’all bitched at me about a follow-up question,” he wrote, “but now we’re gonna get the truth about aliens and UFOs. You’re welcome.”

The White House, Lara Trump, and a Speech Nobody Knew About

One detail from the week added an unexpected layer to the story. Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, claimed on a separate podcast that Trump had a speech prepared on the subject of aliens, waiting for the right moment to deliver it.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about it on Wednesday, she laughed before responding. A speech on aliens, she told reporters, would be news to her.

Whether a prepared address exists or not, Trump’s Truth Social post represents a formal step. Getting from that post to actual declassified documents is another matter, and Washington has learned to treat presidential social media declarations as opening moves rather than outcomes.

Congress Reacts

On Capitol Hill, some members of Congress were quick to welcome the announcement. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s task force on the declassification of federal secrets, wrote on X, “Looks like we are about to have a ton of hearings on this! Thank you @POTUS!!!”

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, also a member of the declassification task force, posted three words: “It’s time. Thank you.”

Both lawmakers have spent recent years pushing for greater government transparency on UAPs, and Trump’s directive gives them a new opening to press their case at the committee level. Luna suggested hearings would follow. Whether those hearings produce anything beyond the exchanges that previous sessions generated is an open question.

A Decade of Growing Scrutiny

Public attention to UFOs and alleged government secrecy around them has grown steadily since 2017, when a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos to US media. Those videos showed unidentified objects behaving in ways that pilots and analysts could not readily explain, and they landed in a press and public ecosystem primed to ask hard questions.

Congress held its first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022. At those hearings, senior Pentagon officials said they had found no evidence that aliens had visited Earth or crash-landed here, though they acknowledged that hundreds of reports from military personnel remained unresolved. That same year, the Pentagon created its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, to collect and investigate UAP reports from across branches of the military.

A House hearing in 2023 raised the temperature further when three military veterans testified that UAP sightings represent a national security concern and that the government had been too secretive in its handling of the matter. No major revelations followed, but the hearings kept the subject in front of lawmakers and the press.

What the Pentagon Has Actually Found

AARO’s 2024 report offered the most detailed official accounting of UAP activity to date. As of that year, the office had received 1,652 reports of unidentified phenomena. Of those, a large number were attributed to identifiable objects: balloons, drones, birds, weather events, or airborne debris. Some sightings remained attributed to what the report described as “balloon or balloon-entities.” Others were connected to foreign drone activity.

On the broader question of alien life or extraterrestrial technology, the report was direct. Government investigations dating back to the end of World War Two had found no evidence that the United States had encountered alien craft or beings.

Yet not every case in AARO’s files has been explained. Jon Kosloski, the office’s director, acknowledged in 2024 that a subset of reports continues to resist resolution. Drawing on his background in physics and engineering, as well as his time in the intelligence community, he described some of the unresolved cases with candor. “I do not understand,” he said, “and I don’t know anybody else who understands them either.”

That admission, quiet as it was in the larger sweep of the 2024 report, has stayed with researchers, journalists, and members of Congress who believe the government has more to say on the subject than it has been willing to share.

A Declaration Without a Deadline

Trump’s directive sets a process in motion, but it does not guarantee a destination. Federal agencies now face the task of identifying what records exist, assessing what can be released, and moving through the classification review process that governs any declassification effort. That process can take months. It can also stall.

Past administrations have faced similar moments. President John F. Kennedy-era records, files related to the assassination, and JFK-era UFO documents have all moved through years of partial, contested declassification. Trump himself, during his first term, authorized the release of some JFK files, though agencies withheld portions on national security grounds.

Whether this directive leads to genuine disclosure or becomes another chapter in a long history of incremental, incomplete releases will depend on how seriously the Pentagon and intelligence agencies treat the order, and how hard Congress pushes to hold them to it.

For now, the announcement has done what viral moments often do in Washington: it has opened a conversation that many people have been trying to have for years, and it has done so on the largest possible stage. A former president says aliens are real. A sitting president says he does not know if they are. Federal files are on their way, in some form, at some point. Whether any of it answers the question that has fascinated the public for decades is a story still waiting to be written.