JD Vance says aliens are ‘demons’ and details obsession with UFOs

JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.As the war in Iran continues, petrol and grocery prices soar and chaos continues at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.Johnson, who bills his show as the place for “cutting, behind-the-scenes insight into the global conflict for freedom”, wondered if Vance, who has been noticeably quiet about Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East that he is said to oppose, had yet looked at any of the files about unidentified flying objects – known these days as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) – which the president has promised to release.“I actually haven’t,” Vance replied, mustering significantly more enthusiasm than for any previous question about the US-Israel military strikes on Iran.“I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”The God-fearing vice-president’s fixation, it was further revealed, extended to the question of the existence of extraplanetary beings, and where they might fit into a wider conversation about religion.“I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion,” he said.Johnson asked him to expand.“Well, look, I think that celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people. I think that the desire to describe everything celestial, everything is otherworldly, to describe it as aliens,” Vance said.“Every great world religion, including Christianity, the one that I believe in, has understood that there are weird things out there, and there are things that are very difficult to explain. And I naturally go, when I hear about sort of extra-natural phenomenon, that’s where I go, is the Christian understanding that, you know, there’s a lot of good out there, but there’s also some evil out there.“I think that one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.”Vance’s musings and promise “to get to the bottom of it” came as both Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama opened themselves to scrutiny over what they knew about UAPs.Obama was forced to make a hasty clarification last month after initially declaring aliens “real” on the American podcast with Brian Tyler Cohen. In a social media statement issued hours later, the former president insisted he was merely trying “to stick with the spirit” of fast-paced questioning, and that if aliens were real he “saw no evidence during my presidency”.Almost inevitably, Trump weighed in, announcing on his Truth Social platform that he had instructed various agencies “to begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life… and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters”.Earlier this month the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency registered the alien.gov and aliens.gov web domains, adding both to the official government website registry, and sparking another round of speculation about what, if anything, the government really knows.“We’re working on it,” Vance replied when Johnson asked him if the government was really going to release all its files.