President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized his predecessor for saying that aliens are “real,” claiming that former president Barack Obama had revealed “classified information” by sharing his thoughts on extraterrestrial life.
Obama last week said on a podcast that aliens are “real, but I haven’t seen them,” sparking widespread questions about whether the government was hiding the existence of extraterrestrials. “There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.
Obama clarified a day later that he was simply performing cosmic math.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” Obama wrote on Instagram. “But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Obama made a “big mistake” with his comments, although he did not specify what Obama said that was erroneous or violated rules on government secrecy.
“I don’t know if they’re real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information,” Trump said. “He’s not supposed to be doing that.”
Prompted by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, Trump said he might declassify the relevant files and “get [Obama] out of trouble.”
Asked whether Obama revealed classified information, the White House on Thursday referred to Trump’s comments on Air Force One.
Former president Bill Clinton has made similar comments where he suggested alien life could be real but said he had no firsthand knowledge of its existence. Clinton has also said he sent federal officials to check for alien life at Area 51 — a military base in Nevada that has been depicted in Hollywood productions as harboring alien technology and even alien beings — but the search turned up nothing unusual.
Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, said on a New York Post podcast this week that Trump has “played a little coy” when family members have asked him about the existence of aliens. She also suggested that Trump may have prepared a speech to give about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that the existence of a prepared speech on extraterrestrial life would be “news to me.”
Trump has faced scrutiny for his own handling of classified information, including a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses and other sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in Florida while out of office.
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