A file image of U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
U.S. President Donald Trump accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, on Thursday (February 19, 2026) of disclosing “classified” information in his recent viral remarks about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Mr. Obama, in a podcast interview released last week, declared that he believed aliens were real but that he had not seen any evidence of it during his 2009-2017 presidency.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them and they’re not being kept in… Area 51,” he told host Brian Tyler Cohen, referring to the top-secret facility at the heart of many UFO conspiracies.
“There’s no underground facility. Unless, there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
The comments quickly lit the internet aflame, prompting the 64-year-old ex-President to issue a clarification.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” he 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!”
Asked on Thursday (February 19, 2026) about the comments, Mr. Trump told reporters that Mr. Obama “gave classified information, he is not supposed to be doing that.”
He did not specify what part of Mr. Obama’s remarks were classified, but claimed “he made a big mistake.”
For his own beliefs about aliens, Mr. Trump, 79, said “I don’t know if they are real or not.”
Interest in UFOs, now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), has been renewed in recent years as the U.S. government probed numerous reports of seemingly supernatural aircraft, amid worries that adversaries could be testing highly advanced technologies.
In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report saying it had no proof that UAP were alien technology, with many suspicious sightings turning out to be merely weather balloons, spy planes, satellites and other normal activity.
Published – February 20, 2026 04:49 am IST
