US President Donald Trump has announced that he will ask US federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, to begin the "process of identifying and releasing" government files related to extraterrestrial life.
Trump made the announcement via his Truth Social platform, after previously accusing former President Barack Obama of leaking classified information, referring to last week's podcast in which his predecessor stated that "aliens exist."
"He shouldn't have done it. The former president made a big mistake."
Asked if he himself believes in the existence of aliens, Trump replied: "I don't know if they're real or not." Obama had told podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview published on Saturday that he thinks aliens exist.
"They are real, but I have not seen them and they are not kept in Area 51," he said in ironic tones, adding that "there is no underground structure, unless there is a grand conspiracy that has been kept secret from the president of the United States."
There has been a significant increase in public interest in UFOs in the US in recent years, spurred especially in 2017 by reports of a secret Pentagon program investigating the testimonies of pilots and other members of the US military who claimed to have seen strange objects in the air.
