Featured Image Credit: Kayla Bartkowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Aliens
Thomas Bamford
Topics: Donald Trump, Aliens
A US Congressman has gone on record to say he's personally seen UFO footage that he can't explain - and he's calling on the government to come clean about what's really out there.
Tennessee's Republican Representative Tim Burchett made the comments this week, days after Donald Trump teased the release of the classified government files on UFOs.
Burchett has been one of the most vocal voices in Congress on the UFO issue for years, repeatedly pushing for greater transparency from the US government about what it knows about unidentified aerial phenomena.
Now he's gone even further, describing on NewsNation objects capable of moves that no known aircraft, military or otherwise, could ever pull off.
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He told host Elizabeth Vargas that what people are seeing in the skies simply can't be brushed off as nothing.
"These people are seeing something out there," he said during the interview.
"I've seen pictures and video of things that defy any reason we have."
Some people believe that UFOs are high tech military hardware from world powers like China, or even Russia. But Burchett explains why this simply cannot be the case.
"If it's the Chinese, they would own us.
"If it's the Russians, they wouldn't be bogged down in Ukraine. If it was ours, we would never risk our military fighting men and women in half-a-billion dollar aircraft out with these things."
Which sort of makes sense, really.
He went on to describe objects that can hover for hours, shoot straight up into the air and pull off manoeuvres no known aircraft is capable of.
On top of that, he recalled a conversation with a US admiral who told him about tracking something underwater on sonar, an object nearly the size of a football field traveling at over 200 miles per hour.
"We don't have anything of that capability or size," Burchett said.
The comments come just days after Trump confirmed that the first releases of classified government UFO files would begin very soon.
This follows a directive he issued to the Department of Defense in February, to release all documents related to UFOs, alien life and unidentified aerial phenomena.
It's not the only time UFOs have been in the headlines recently.
Former President Obama previously said aliens are real, although he later clarified he was simply referring to the scale of the universe rather than suggesting the government was hiding anything.
He said: "They are real - but I haven't seen them," speaking to Brian Tyler Cohen on his podcast.
"They're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States," he added.
Trump wasn't convinced however, claiming Obama had let slip classified information.
Burchett's message to those in power remains a simple one: be honest with the public.
"Just put it out there and let people decide," he said.
"I think they can handle it. I just don't think our government and their arrogance - it's power, it's about control, it's everything that runs Washington D.C."
With Trump's file releases reportedly imminent, it won't be long before the public gets to make up their own minds.