Former Vice President Kamala Harris says President Donald Trump’s directive that U.S. agencies release government files on aliens and extraterrestrial life is meant to distract from the “corruption, cowardice, and incompetence coming out of this administration.”
Harris made the comment Friday during a Detroit stop on her book tour promoting “107 Days,” her book detailing her losing 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump ordered government agencies to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” documents “related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects, and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters” after former President Barack Obama said during a podcast appearance that aliens are real.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51,” Obama said. “There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
Obama later clarified that he thinks it is statistically likely life exists beyond Earth, given the vastness of the universe, but saw no evidence of extraterrestrials during his presidency.
Harris said the Trump administration relies on overwhelming people with distractions as a strategy.
“It feels like chaos, because what we are witnessing and experiencing is a high velocity event,” Harris said. “It is the swift implementation of a plan that has been decades in the making.”
The former vice president said Trump’s agenda is “purely grounded in corruption and grift.”
“They’re trying to suggest that the blame for your condition and your suffering is based on the powerless so they can distract us from focusing on the powerful,” Harris said. “We are witnessing, in vivid detail, something that has been happening over a period of time, which is the concentration of wealth and power in the few at the expense of the many.”
Harris said she has been surprised and “disgusted” by the “capitulation” of business leaders to Trump.
“There are some people who are unapologetically just purely transactional,” Harris said. “They’re not pretending to be grounded in what is morally right, what is principled, what is value based. They’re just in it for whatever they can get out of it.”
Seeing that, Harris said, has led her to believe that “we should also encourage people to be transactional voters.”
“Expect something from your vote. Demand something from your vote,” Harris said. “Do not let anybody take your vote for granted, knowing that you believe it is your duty to vote and they can just expect you’re going to vote without performing.”
A small group of pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside the venue for Harris’ event, which started about 90 minutes late due to long lines to get through security.
Harris emphasized the importance of the upcoming midterm elections, arguing Congress is currently ceding its budgetary and war powers to the executive branch. Her remarks came just hours before the U.S. and Israel launched a coordinated attack against Iran.
Asked by moderator Jemele Hill why she decided against running for California governor this year, Harris laughed before an audience member shouted out, “Because she’s going to be president,” prompting a “that’s right” from another audience member and a round of applause.
Harris said earlier in the evening that she hasn’t yet decided whether to mount a third campaign for the nation’s top office.
But Hill told the former Democratic nominee she sounded like a presidential candidate while expressing her fear that Americans’ sense of pride is being diminished.
“This is our country,” Harris said. “We’re not going to let those people in Washington, D.C., define for us what and who we are as Americans.”
