“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday.

Trump’s post came hours after he condemned former President Barack Obama of disclosing classified information after the former president said aliens are “real” on a podcast last week.

“They’re real,” Obama told podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen. “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’s comments quickly spread online, prompting the former president to issue a clarification on Sunday on Instagram.

“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” he said. “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.”

The clarification did little to stop Trump from taking another jab. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, Trump said Obama “made a big mistake.” 

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

In admonishing the former president, Trump suggested Obama’s comments were classified, but offered to throw him a helping hand. “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.” Trump added that while he doesn’t “have an opinion on it,” he knows there’s an overwhelming number of people who believe it.

Trump’s rocky record on declassification

Trump’s comments on declassification are not new. In October 2022, two months after FBI agents seized boxes of materials from his Mar-a-Lago home, the then-former president questioned a president’s or former president’s legal authority to declassify sensitive information. 

He later added to the confusion when he said in an interview there really is no such thing as classified information.

“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. “If you’re the president of the United States you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified. Even by thinking about it.”

Many national security legal experts dismissed Trump’s suggestion he could declassify documents just by thinking of them. In what later became one of the turning points in Trump’s second bid for reelection, the former president was charged with multiple counts of obstruction of justice and retention of national defense information. After Trump’s election win in 2024, a federal judge in Florida dismissed the case, ruling the special counsel was improperly appointed.

Trump himself was asked what his thoughts were on aliens. In June 2019 he said he was briefed on Navy UFO reports but expressed doubts.

“I did have one very brief meeting on it,” he told ABC News. “People are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”