When he was asked about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) during a recent 60 Minutes interview, President Donald Trump revealed that members of the U.S. Air Force have been seeing “strange” things in the sky.
“So here’s the story,” said Trump. “I’m not too much of a believer, but I sat in the Oval Office, first term and a little bit second term, meeting with Air Force pilots that are really good, solid people. These are not people that you would say are conspiracy theorists. But they’re great, great pilots. They’re the real deal. And they’ve told me things that are very strange. They said that-- in-- in certain cases. They said yes, there’s something going on out there. Because they’re flying an F-22, which is the best there is, the fastest, the best plane that anyone’s ever seen. And something goes by them at three times their speed and it’s round. It’s not aerodynamic, it’s round.”
Just before he won the 2024 presidential election, Trump also discussed aliens and UFOs with popular podcaster Joe Rogan. In that interview, he also mentioned that he’s not s big “believer” in aliens or UFOs, but referenced pilots who he described as “solid people,” who saw what he called a “a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor,” and that moved faster than an F-22.
After Trump started his second term in the White House, he called on the Department of War to release documents related to UFOs. The latest tranche of materials was released last month, and included reports about a sighting of a “matte black triangular shape” spotted by federal agents.
“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life, you know,” Trump told Rogan in 2024. During both the Rogan interview and the interview this week with 60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat, Trump said that UFOs are one of the things that people ask him most about. Audacy covered survey results this summer that showed around 21% of Americans even believe that aliens have already visited Earth.
“It is one of the questions in private I get asked about,” Trump told Douthat. Later on, Douthat asked Trump about a rumored “secret program that even presidents don’t know about to study this stuff.”
The president responded: “I haven’t heard that. But if there is I’m gonna find out about it right after this interview.”
Harvard scientist Avi Loeb, known for his research into extraterrestrial life, joined NewsNation to discuss Trump’s comments. He said the “round” object is puzzling not just because the pilots could not observe signs of propulsion, but because “round objects that move faster than the speed of sound should create a shock wave, a hot blast wave in the air, and that was not observed.”
Like the president, Loeb also said he hasn’t found evidence of a secret program to study alien life operated by the U.S. government without the president’s knowledge.
“My message to all these people who claim that such objects exist is simple: ‘Take me to the nearest alien spacecraft,’” said Loeb.
However, Loeb said he does expect more classified information to be released in the future. He recommends that sensors in the areas where the mysterious objects have been spotted to gather more information about them and what they might be made of.
“That is my goal, to partner with the Pentagon on this mission,” said Loeb.
