When former president Barack Obama was asked in a rapid-fire exchange whether aliens were real, he replied bluntly:
“They’re real.”
It was dry, ambiguous, almost certainly playful. In another era it would have drifted away as late-night banter.
But this is not another era.
Donald Trump reportedly bristled. Not because Obama had ‘confirmed’ extraterrestrial life. But because he had stepped into a spotlight Trump had been preparing for himself.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised sweeping disclosure about UFOs – now formally labelled Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). For part of his base, this wasn’t fringe curiosity. It was proof of a deeper belief: that hidden elites conceal transformative truths.
Trump cast himself as the man who would finally pull back the curtain.
Then Obama walked on stage first.
A Familiar Pattern
Trump’s political life has unfolded in constant comparison with Obama. From the birther crusade that elevated him politically, to inauguration crowd obsessions, to the dismantling of Obama-era policies, the rivalry has been structural, not incidental.
Obama was composed; Trump confrontational.
Obama measured; Trump maximalist.
Again and again, Trump has framed his presidency as the larger, stronger, more historic correction.
Even in retirement, Obama remains a reference point.
Now, improbably, the competition has extended to extraterrestrials.
Disclosure as Theatre
Trump’s UFO pledge was never just about aliens. It fit a broader narrative: that the establishment hides epochal secrets and that he alone will expose them.
Disclosure is emotional currency.
- You were right to suspect.
- They were lying.
- I will prove it.
But spectacle depends on timing. It requires ownership of the reveal.
Obama’s offhand reply disrupted that structure. No suspense. No promise of documents. No drumroll.
Just indifference.
And indifference shrinks a spectacle faster than opposition ever could.
Stealing Thunder
For years, Trump has sought to outshine his predecessor – in scale, in impact, in historical standing. Yet here, in one of the stranger corners of public life, Obama seized the moment without seeming to try.
Trump built anticipation.
Obama dissolved it.
The irony is not about extraterrestrials. It is about control – of narrative, of timing, of drama.
In modern politics, even aliens can become campaign material. But the sharpest move is not always revelation.
Sometimes it is refusal.
And sometimes the cleanest way to steal thunder is to treat it as background noise.
And in the long contest between revelation and rivalry, it was not the promise of disclosure that prevailed – but the man who didn’t need it.
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Sort of oblique to this story, most people I know accept that we are probably not the only sentient beings in the universe, but also acknowledge that if there are “aliens” out there, they have probably not come here yet given the huge distances between us and them.
It is understandable that TACO Trumpery would compare himself with Obama and attempt to destroy, remove or obliterate any Obama social reforms because he, TACO, is intrinsically jealous of everybody who can achieve things.
As the present PPOTUS (Pederast Protector of the United States) TACO has nothing to offer except bluster, self-indulgence and self-serving policies to enrich himself & corporate entities associated with himself.
Hans Christian Andersen, that Danish writer, tells of the ”King’s New Clothes”, and some of the MAGA kids are waking up to the con-job being played on their families by the BILLIONAIRES CLUB that has just reduced their taxation contribution to the American commonwealth. Thank you for nothing, TACO!!
The alien disclosures were also, as usual, meant to distract attention from Epstein.
uncletimrob,
How dare you! Dog made the universe only for hoodlum beans.
Hm, on second thought, maybe Dog with his omniscience realised that hoodlums would be a major destructive force in the original universe if they ever got loose.
I could just remove them from existence, he thought. Ah, fuck it, I’ll dump ’em in this uninhabited bubbleverse and just forget about them.
We’ve always been blessed and cursed here with our own aliens, particularly political, so aliens from elswhere are bowellery in a brain, and thus, real. Yes. We don’t need other alien aliens, no.
This documentary, The Phenomenon [2020], is mostly focused on American sightings, but at the end it shifts focus to Africa, to Ruwa, Zimbabwe, where a bunch of schoolchildren witnessed aliens landing and getting out of their craft.
The African sighting became known as the Ariel School UFO incident, it was widely reported, and the children were questioned both then and twenty years later. Their recollections remained vivid. It needs to be noted that the kids were also carefully interviewed by John Mack, a Harvard Uni-based child psychiatrist; each child’s recollections correlated with those of the others.
Other documentaries (among a large list) include Accidental Truth: UFO Revelations [2023], and Encounters [2023].
Scepticism is all well and good, but evidence is key and the testimonies of the Ariel School children are compelling.
The Ariel incident is compelling, Canguro. It has stood the test of time. As has the Westall school incident in Melbourne, 1966.
And let’s not forget the incident at Roswell.
Roswell,
You had an incident? I hope it didn’t involve probes of a rectal nature.
Ooohhh…you meant the town of the same name didn’t you?
GL, happy to tell you I wasn’t even alive at the time of the incident.
But I did meet some of the guys in the late 1980s – they had been on the run for about 40 years. I hid them in my wine cellar for what I’d hoped would be for one or two days only. Took me six months to get rid of them.
@ GL
You’re in good form today mate,
Just wait until I get my Dog onto you and she chases you to the edge of the flat earth and you bump your head on the dome.
That’ll learn ya!
“I hid them in my wine cellar for what I’d hoped would be for one or two days only. Took me six months to get rid of them.”
If they hung around the toilet a lot then they must have been klingons.
uncletimrob,
Everybody knows the world is shaped like a banana. Is your dog named Sirius? (thinks: maybe her pedigree name is Not So Sirius. unthinks)
Time to…no…no…don’t do it…the pain…siriusly consider watching an episode or two of The Goodies.
Why stop at two?
Michael,
I wound up watching four, including Kung Fu Kapers, before I started getting tired.
Canguru, “Scepticism is all well and good, but evidence is key and the testimonies of the Ariel School children are compelling.”
However compelling, they are just testimonies, not hard evidence. Testimonies can never be accepted as proof. They are not the key that evidence provides. If the testimony is accurate, then it shouldn’t be that hard to back it up with solid evidence. if no evidence can be found to back up the testimony, then the testimony cannot be trusted as accurate.
Not good enough, GL. I demand nothing less than an all-night marathon.
But I’ll give you one more chance. 😁