US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has accused his predecessor Barack Obama of disclosing classified information after Obama stated in a recent podcast interview that aliens are “real”.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One today ahead of a flight to to state of Georgia, Trump claimed Obama had improperly revealed sensitive material.

Quizzed by Fox News journalist Peter Doocy about Obama’s recent comments, Trump said Obama “made a big mistake”.

“He gave classified information, he’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump said.

.@pdoocy: "Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?"

President Trump: "He gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that." pic.twitter.com/4zUHOdT5dS

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 19, 2026

Trump did not specify which part of Obama’s remarks he believed were classified.

Asked separately whether he believed extraterrestrials were real, Trump replied: “Well I don’t know if they’re real or not… No, I don’t have an opinion on it. A lot of people do.”

Trump’s comments follow an interview Obama gave to podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, in which he was asked about the existence of alien life.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them and they’re not being kept in… Area 51,” Obama said, referencing the long-running conspiracy theories surrounding the secretive Nevada military site, Area 51.

“There’s no underground facility. Unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

The clip quickly went viral, prompting Obama to clarify his remarks in a subsequent Instagram post.

Former President Obama confirms that aliens are real.

Via @briantylercohen pic.twitter.com/QfMwRJ8jCU

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 14, 2026

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” he said in an Instagram post earlier this week.

“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”

There was no indication in Obama’s comments that he was referring to classified intelligence.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump also revealed this week that the US President is holding onto a speech detailing extraterrestrial life and spaceships, and said Trump is waiting for the right time to deliver it.

Speaking on the Pod Force One podcast, Lara Trump said the president has played coy when she and her husband Eric have asked about the existence of UFO’s and aliens.

“We’ve kind of asked my father-in-law about this… we all want to know about the UFOs… and he played a little coy with us,” she said.

“I’ve heard kind of around, I think my father-in-law has actually said it, that there is some speech that he has, that I guess at the right time, I don’t know when the right time is, he’s going to break out and talk about and it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life.”

Asked yesterday about Lara Trump’s claim, White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said a speech on aliens would be very exciting and great interest but “news to me.”

“I’ll have to check in with our speech writing team. Uh, and that would be of great interest to me personally, and I’m sure all of you in this room and apparently former President Obama, too.”

Interest in so-called UFOs, now formally referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), has grown in recent years.

In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report saying it had no proof that UAP were alien technology, with many suspicious sightings turning out to be merely weather balloons, spy planes, satellites and other normal activity.

With reporting from AFP