Last week, Trump appeared on Fox News and spoke to Tucker Carlson, whose wildly popular show previously claimed the US Government had stored the wreckage of a UFO in some secret location.
But before the segment was screened, hoaxers who appear to be linked to 4Chan circulated a fake post purporting to be from a Fox producer which said the interview contained statements from Trump indicating that aliens are ‘in hiding’ and waiting to ‘reveal themselves’.
After the real interview aired without the President talking about ‘disclosure’, conspiracy theorists speculated that there was a second, secret segment which was pulled because it contained the bombshell truth about aliens.
Interest in unidentified flying objects has reached fever pitch recently after a series of revelations about a US government research programme called the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program (AATIP) and the publication of videos captured by US Navy pilots depicting their encounters with mysterious aircraft travelling at impossibly high speeds.
When Tucker asked the President if he believed in UFOs, Trump responded: ‘I don’t want to get into it too much but personally I doubt it.
‘You have people that swear by it, right, pilots have come in and they have said … and these are not pilots that are into that particular world… we have had people saying they have seen things.
‘I’m not a believer but I guess anything is possible.’
Tucker then asks Trump about the UFO wreckage and he said: ‘I haven’t heard that no.
‘It has not been a big thing, but I’ve seen it on your show – I’ve seen it.
‘I don’t assume it’s correct but, you know, I have an open mind. Nowadays you can believe anything, right?’
Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator, appeared on the Tucker Carlson show after Trump to discuss his comments.
He told Metro: ‘When the UFO community heard that Tucker Carlson had asked the President about UFOs, speculation reached fever pitch. Fox News is the President’s favoured news channel and he regularly watches Tucker’s show.
‘Additionally, Tucker had accompanied the President on his recent Far East trip and even witnessed the meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, so one theory was that the President had chosen Tucker as the major news figure through whom Disclosure was to be announced. Tucker has a long-standing interest in UFOs and he’s interviewed me seven times in the last few months, and has also interviewed retired intelligence officials involved with the Pentagon’s shadowy AATIP program, which investigated UFOs for the US government.
‘Before the interview was broadcast, a note was posted on the internet purporting to be from a Fox News film editor, giving a partial transcript in which the President essentially confirmed an extraterrestrial presence.
‘This was a hoax, but when the actual interview aired, conspiracy theorists suggested the ‘real’ one had been pulled at the last moment, as part of an ongoing war within the US intelligence community about whether or not to Disclose.’
Pope said that the President’s remarks were ‘genuinely interesting’, even though they were not the smoking bullet many people were hoping for.
‘Setting aside the hysteria, conspiracy theories and false information, the President’s remarks were genuinely interesting,’ he added.
‘Every word, gesture, facial expression and tone of voice was analyzed and that fact that immediately after the President’s remarks Tucker asked me to analyze what was said also caused a lot of speculation, given my official involvement with this subject.
”The “Nick Pope still secretly works for the government” theory was doubtless repeated many times. What we said – and what we didn’t say – in the interview was analyzed in minute detail and everyone came up with their own theories: some thought this was a prelude to Disclosure, while others speculated that this was a sort of ‘soft Disclosure’.
‘Some people have even suggested that recent official statements about needing to explain and stop UFO incursions is a tactic designed to ramp up the fear factor ahead of an alien invasion.
‘The spiritual/New Age faction in the UFO community object to people like myself and former AATIP director Luis Elizondo raising the issue of a threat, but that’s the key issue for those of us who’ve looked at this subject from within government.
‘Whatever we’re dealing with, the first question must always be ‘is there a threat?’. Only when we can answer this question with an informed, definitive ‘no’ (and we can’t currently give that assurance) can we move on to other questions about the phenomenon.
‘That said, I’m not anticipating an alien invasion or a false flag alien invasion – a bizarre conspiracy theory that alleges the powers-that-be will fake an alien invasion as part of a plan to sweep away freedoms, declare martial law and create a one-world government to counter the apparent danger.’
So does Trump know the facts about UFOs? At this stage, we just don’t know for sure.
‘Despite the President’s apparent scepticism, he confirmed that he remained open-minded on the issue and when asked about the briefing he’d received, his “I don’t want to really get into it too much” sparked rumours that the brief covered highly classified information that couldn’t be made public. ‘On that point, it’s noteworthy that several US senators have recently confirmed that they received classified briefings on UFOs, while the US Navy confirmed they wouldn’t be making public a single word of the guidance they recently issued to military personnel, advising them what to do if they encounter a UFO.
Given the recent upsurge in sightings – as acknowledged by the US military themselves – and given the current high level of US Congressional interest, it’s likely that the President will continue to be asked about this.
‘In another recent interview on the topic he acknowledged that military pilots ‘see things that are a little bit different than in the past, so we’re going to see, but we’ll watch it’, so again, this speaks to a new approach in the US. ‘People seem to forget that before December 2017, if people asked about UFOs, the official line was that the topic was of no interest and that nobody was investigating.
‘So in a little over 18 months there’s been a complete u-turn on policy. We’ve come a long way, and I’m sure there’s more to come.’
