Vice President JD Vance told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that he believes UFOs might not be extraterrestrial at all. He thinks they could be something darker and older: demons.
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, framed his view through a distinctly Christian lens, connecting the phenomenon to spiritual warfare rather than science fiction.
"I don't think they're aliens. I think they're demons anyway, but that's a long discussion."
It's a striking statement from the second-highest officeholder in the country. It's also one that a lot more Americans probably agree with than the political class would care to admit.
Vance didn't stop at a throwaway line, according to the New York Post. He built the argument out, grounding it in a worldview that billions of people on this planet share but that Washington typically treats as unspeakable in polite company.
"Every great world religion, including Christianity, the one I believe in, as understood, there are weird things out there."
He went further, drawing a direct connection between unexplained aerial phenomena and the Christian understanding of good and evil operating in the world.
"When I hear about an extra natural phenomenon, that's where I go to: The Christian understanding that there's a lot of good out there, but there's also evil out there."
And then the line that will generate the most allergic reactions in newsrooms from coast to coast:
"I think that one of the devil's great tricks is to convince people he never existed."
That's a paraphrase of Baudelaire by way of C.S. Lewis, and it's the kind of statement that would've been unremarkable from a public figure fifty years ago. Today, it registers as radical. That shift says more about the culture than it does about Vance.
The vice president didn't just offer theological speculation. He signaled genuine intent to dig into the government's classified UFO files, something he admitted he hasn't had time to pursue since taking office.
"When I came in, I was obsessed with the UFO files, and you start getting really busy worrying about the economy and national security, and things like that. But I've still got three years left as vice president."
He doubled down on the commitment, noting the unique position he holds.
"I'm more curious than anybody, and I've got three years of the very tippy top of the classification."
That matters. For decades, the UFO conversation has been stuck in a loop: military personnel report sightings, Congress holds the occasional hearing, agencies stonewall, and the public gets drip-fed ambiguity. If a sitting vice president with top-level security clearance decides to force transparency, that's a fundamentally different dynamic than another congressional subcommittee request that gets slow-walked into oblivion.
Vance's remarks came weeks after former President Barack Obama claimed on a liberal podcast that aliens are "real." Obama later walked it back, saying he hadn't actually seen evidence of contact.
"But I haven't seen them. They're not being kept at Area 51."
Obama also said he "saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us." So he teased a bombshell, then retreated to the safe ground of plausible deniability. Classic.
Shortly after Obama's comments, President Trump announced his administration was starting "the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)." Trump told reporters simply:
"I don't know if they're real or not."
He also added, with characteristic directness, that he might "get him out of trouble by declassifying," referring to Obama.
The contrast here is worth noting. Obama hinted at mysteries, offered no transparency, and left office with the files sealed. The Trump administration is actually moving to release them.
The instinct in establishment media will be to treat Vance's comments as bizarre or embarrassing. That instinct is predictable and wrong.
Polls have consistently shown that large majorities of Americans believe the government is hiding information about UFOs. A significant share of the country holds religious beliefs that include the existence of spiritual beings, both good and evil. Vance isn't speaking from the fringe. He's speaking from a tradition that predates the Enlightenment and that most of the world still takes seriously.
Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson has also explored this territory, conveying beliefs that UAPs could be demonic rather than alien in origin. Carlson has even claimed to have been physically attacked at night by a demon, an experience he said left him with claw marks while he slept next to his wife and dog. Whether one finds that credible or not, it reflects a growing willingness among public figures on the right to engage with the supernatural honestly rather than hiding behind the technocratic agnosticism that dominates Washington discourse.
The secular left treats religious conviction as a private eccentricity to be tolerated, never as a legitimate interpretive framework for public phenomena. That's not neutrality. It's its own kind of dogma. When a vice president says plainly that he views the unexplained through the lens of Christianity, it punctures a consensus that was never actually a consensus. It was just silence enforced by social pressure.
Vance has the clearance. He says he has the curiosity. And he now has a public commitment on the record.
Whether what U.S. officials have been puzzled by turns out to be advanced foreign technology, atmospheric phenomena, something spiritual, or something else entirely, the American public deserves to see the files their government has been hoarding for decades. Vance seems to agree. The question is whether the bureaucracy will cooperate or whether the vice president will have to drag the truth out of the same agencies that have spent generations burying it.
Either way, he told the country what he believes. In Washington, that alone is unusual enough to qualify as breaking news.
