Over at the Washington Times, Ben Wolfgang has an interesting analysis of a topic that drops into the rare intersection of politics and ufology. He’s checked in with a number of UFO enthusiasts and some of them seem to be increasingly confident that Donald Trump may wind up being the President who finally lifts the veil of government secrecy that’s surrounded this topic for the past seventy years or more. But what would give them that idea?

Back in 2016, most of the people who have traditionally been interested in the topic were placing all of their chips on Hillary Clinton to win the election. Whether you believe it or not, there actually are plenty of people in that community who were willing to base their votes almost entirely on how likely the candidate was to move toward disclosure. Clinton was seen as the best choice because of her long association with UFO enthusiast John Podesta. She even said during one radio interview that she would examine the evidence and see what was possible to show to the public. Trump, by contrast, has never seemed to show much interest in the topic.

But now, some of the ufologists seem to believe that the situation has changed. And they’re crediting the recent, official release of the Navy UFO videos as evidence.

Top UFO researchers were banking on a Hillary Clinton presidential victory four years ago in the hopes that her administration would lift the dark veil of secrecy over military and federal government research into unidentified craft and otherworldly technology.

Instead, UFO activists find themselves over the moon with President Trump, whose unexpected decision last week to release stunning footage showing U.S. military close encounters with unexplained objects in the sky has created an unprecedented wave of momentum that could finally break an information dam that has held for decades.

The White House has been tight-lipped on the subject, other than Mr. Trump’s declaration of the Navy release to be a “hell of a video,” but the Pentagon has shifted the national debate by putting forward military UFO videos through official government channels. That decision, specialists say, should end once and for all any debate about the existence of unidentified objects in the sky and instead should fuel deeper questions about exactly what the government knows and what other UFO interactions may be buried deep within classified Pentagon and intelligence agency files.

While I’d personally love for this to be true, let’s just say that I’m not going to be holding my breath. For one thing, I’ve seen no indication whatsoever that Donald Trump personally made the decision to officially release those videos. The military declassifies and releases things all the time, dealing with nearly every subject you could imagine. The President is not dragged in to personally authorize every such declassification decision. If he was, he’d never have time to do anything else.

Further, as I mentioned when I first wrote about this subject last week, this wasn’t exactly a tough call for the Pentagon to make. The videos were already out in the public eye and had been for more than two years. And it doesn’t sound like Trump was very interested in the release to begin with. His only comment on it was that it was “a hell of a video” and he only said that after being directly asked about it by a reporter. Previously, when he was asked if he believed there was anything to the whole UFO topic he said, “not really.”

But should he be? One of the heads of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is quoted in the linked article as saying that “the time is ripe” for a radical change in how the government treats this subject and Trump is the “unconventional” type of president who could lead the charge. Maybe, but that idea rests on a couple of very big assumptions.

First of all, we’d have to believe that Trump actually knows anything about the whole UFO situation. I highly doubt that the deep intelligence agencies involved in the subject are telling him much if anything. And they probably wouldn’t even if he asked. Bill Clinton tried to get the information when he was president and he later related the story of how nobody would tell him anything. There are layers upon layers of military and intelligence agencies between the President and the information we’re looking for.

But just imagine if he did somehow dig up some shocking revelations and decide to take them public. Trump’s critics are constantly accusing him of creating “distractions” to draw the public’s attention away from his many other perceived sins or shortcomings. Can you imagine a bigger or better distraction than spilling the beans about extraterrestrial technology or even the aliens themselves?

Of course, that could just as easily backfire on him too. Given the current circumstances in the world, you can probably guess the sort of reaction at least some people would have. “Really? First a global pandemic. Then swarms of Murder Hornets. And now it’s an alien invasion? That’s just super.”