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President Donald Trump announced this Wednesday that his administration will soon release "everything it can" from the classified files on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena, remarks that garnered international media attention during a meeting at the White House with the astronauts of the Artemis II mission.
The question arose when a journalist interrupted the official event to directly inquire about the status of the files. Trump responded without hesitation: "I think we are going to release everything we can in the near future. It has been on people's minds for a long time. They want to know about UFOs and everything related to that material, and we are going to publish a lot of things that we have. I think some will be very interesting to people."
The president went further and revealed that during his first term, he personally interviewed military pilots about their sightings: "I interviewed pilots, very credible people, and they said they saw things they wouldn't believe. So you're going to read about it."
The announcement this Wednesday is the most specific public statement to date regarding the imminence of that disclosure, and it represents the continuation of a process that Trump initiated in February 2026, when he ordered the Pentagon to declassify files on UFOs and extraterrestrial life, citing the "great interest" of the public.
That order was partly motivated by statements from former President Barack Obama in a podcast, where he hinted that extraterrestrial life "is real."
The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed at the end of February that the Pentagon was actively working on the directive.
On April 17, Trump had already indicated that the review of the material had uncovered "interesting documents" and promised to release the first batch through a centralized digital platform. The growing interest in UFOs following Trump's order has been remarkable in recent months in the United States.
The context of the announcement was significant: Trump welcomed the four astronauts of Artemis II—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen—in the Oval Office, who completed earlier this month the first crewed mission around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The mission set the record for the farthest distance traveled by humans from Earth at 406,773 kilometers on April 6.
Trump had celebrated the Artemis II landing on April 11 with a message on Truth Social: “I hope to see all of you very soon at the White House”, and this Wednesday he fulfilled that promise.
Trump's change of stance on UFOs is striking. In 2019, when informed about reports from naval pilots, he told ABC News: "Do I believe it? Not particularly."
Seven years later, his administration is driving what analysts describe as the largest executive outreach effort in U.S. history on this subject.
The Anomaly Resolution Office in All Domains (AARO), established in 2022 to centralize the analysis of these phenomena, has amassed over 2,000 reports, none of which have provided evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
A Gallup poll from November 2025 found that 41% of respondents believe in extraterrestrial life visiting Earth, the highest level since 1997, while 65% of Americans support the full declassification of UFO files.
Trump did not specify a concrete date for the release of the files, but his words this Wednesday leave little doubt about the direction: "They are going to read about it."
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