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Rogan: UFO file dump could be distraction from Iran war that’s ‘not going very well’

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by Sarah Davis - 05/08/26 2:25 PM ET

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by Sarah Davis - 05/08/26 2:25 PM ET

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Podcaster Joe Rogan questioned GOP Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) about the motives behind the Trump administration’s decision to release new government files about UFOs amid the Iran war.

The Pentagon released a trove of UFO-related files on Friday, after President Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to do so.

Burchett and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.) have led the call in Congress for the release of more information about UFOs. The new documents include reported sightings of what the government calls unidentified anomalous phenomena dating to 1950.

“What doesn’t totally make sense is why now disclosure? Other than — I mean this is being cynical — the Iran war isn’t going very well, the American public’s very upset, a lot of people don’t think we should ever have been involved in that in the first place and we need some good news,” Rogan asked Burchett during a Thursday episode of his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

Burchett waved away the suggestion, saying he doesn’t believe “Trump really even cares” about distracting from the war.

“I just think he genuinely sees that America needs to know this stuff,” he told Rogan.

The Republican lawmaker told Fox News last month that he had “been briefed on some things” that were “pretty wild.”

“It’s not about little green men, it’s not about dadgum flying saucers,” Burchett said. “It’s about what are we spending tens of millions of your dollars on when some alphabet agency tells me they don’t exist and then again, another department within that department tells me they do exist.

“I think America needs to know that stuff, and we need to know what the heck we’re spending the money on to study,” Burchett added.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) slammed the Trump administration over the file release on Friday, calling it a distraction in a social media post.

“I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t,” she wrote.

“I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar,” she continued. “Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday.”

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