White House unable to say whether Trump believes in aliens

People use night vision goggles to look at the night sky during a UFO tour in the desert outside Sedona, Arizona ( REUTERS/Mike Blake )

The truth as to whether Donald Trump believes in aliens may be out there — but the White House isn’t certain.

Asked about the President’s views on UFOs after reports revealed a secretive federal initiative to track potential extraterrestrial sightings, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said hadn’t heard either way.

“Does the president believe in the existence of UFOs and would he be interested in restoring funding for that program”? a reporter asked.

“Somehow that question hasn’t come up in our back-and-forth over the last couple of days, but I will check in on that and be happy to circle back,” Ms Sanders replied.

There was little doubt on the parts of some people involved in the UFO programme, according to The New York Times.

Robert Bigelow, described as an aerospace entrepreneur and friend of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid whose company received much of the money from the since-lapsed federal program, said he was “absolutely certain” that aliens have visited Earth. Mr Reid told the Times that the programme was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service”.

And Mr Trump’s former presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has also embraced the possibility, telling a New Hampshire newspaper in 2015 that “we may have been” visited by aliens already and that “I’m going to get to the bottom of it”.