A seven-month-old joke from Seth Meyers may reveal the true reason President Donald Trump is teasing the idea of alien existence.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday evening that he would assign Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”
Days before Trump’s announcement, his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, teased on the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast that Trump may soon confirm the existence of alien life. The Truth Social post also came days after former President Barack Obama set the internet alight with his experience on the issue during his presidency.
Trump’s sudden focus on extraterrestrials was partially predicted by Seth Meyers in a July 2025 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, which covered Trump’s reaction to the ongoing Epstein scandal.
At that time, The Wall Street Journal had just reported that Trump’s name was featured in the Epstein files. Although Meyers didn’t yet know that Trump’s name would be mentioned over a million times in the files, he still felt confident the issue wouldn’t be going away for the president any time soon.
“Whatever’s in those Epstein files must be really f---ing bad,” Meyers said. He soon added, “They must be finding so many mentions of Trump, they’re gonna have to change the name to ‘The Trump Files: featuring Jeffrey Epstein.’”
Meyers soon declared, “I honestly think we’re one more Epstein story away from Trump just announcing that UFOs are real.”
The Trump administration’s sudden teasing of aliens comes not just after months of growing concerns over his connection to the Epstein files, but mere days after former president Barack Obama offered his take on the existence of aliens.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51,” Obama said in an interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen.
Obama clarified in an Instagram post on Sunday that he believes aliens likely are real, but they’re too far away for humans to have made contact with them yet.
“The distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low,” Obama explained, “and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
When Trump was asked by reporters on Thursday about Obama’s comments, Trump replied, “Well, he gave classified information, he’s not supposed to be doing that.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on what exactly Obama said that was “classified information,” but he did vaguely share some of his own thoughts on aliens.
“I don’t know if they’re real or not,” Trump said, soon adding, “I never talk about it. A lot of people do.”
