In Brief: Vance on UFOs, Elizondo on the Daily Show, and Ancient Apocalypse Returns

​It’s been a busy week so far. At a rally in Eau Claire, Wisc., Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. J. D. Vance injected UFOs into the presidential campaign and inadvertently punctured the claim that Congress is deeply informed and concerned about extraterrestrial incursions. After incorrectly summarizing the past seven years of UFO interest as a “story from a couple years ago that, like, the Defense Department had declassified the UFO stuff,” Vance added, “I don’t talk about that because I don’t know what’s going on. […] So, to all the journalists there: If you do know anything about the UFO story, please tell us because we’re very, very fascinated by it.” Vance, a sitting senator, admits to knowing nothing and not even being informed enough to know what he doesn’t know, giving the lie to claims that UFO terror has gripped anything but a very small minority of legislators. 

​Meanwhile, Imminent author Lue Elizondo appeared on The Daily Show last night to discuss his book with host Ronnie Cheng. While Cheng kept the conversation light and offered little pushback on Elizondo’s bizarre claims, he did manage to point out a glaring problem with Elizondo’s allegations: Elizondo spends nearly all of this time talking about bureaucratic processes and infighting, and not the alleged space monsters plotting to destroy us. "You're talking about paperwork. I'm talking about aliens!" Cheng said. Cheng repeatedly asked the obvious question: Why is Elizondo obsessed with bureaucracy if we are facing an imminent alien threat, and Elizondo only talked about legislation and hearings. Where are the aliens?

​I give Ronnie Cheng credit for puncturing Elizondo's fantasy bubble a bit by repeatedly insisting that if we were really being invaded by space aliens, the conversation wouldn't be about bureaucracy, hearings, and funding. It's something every reporter should be asking.
 
For his part, Elizondo offered a number of howlers, some from his book and some only implied in it: Roswell was an alien crash site, aliens are “interested in our technology,” officials are “up close and personal with these things” (whatever that means), and, after 75 years, we have no idea whether the aliens are hostile—but somehow are a threat. He offered yet another confusing account of whether and how he led either AAWSAP or the (non-existent) AATIP, and he also carefully obscured that most of his “evidence” is, by the account published in his own book, little more than secondhand rumors. Even Cheng seemed to think Elizondo’s claims were nutty, particularly since no one in government seems all that hot and bothered by hostile space monsters invading our planet.
 
Perhaps most telling is that when directly asked whether he was saying space aliens are real, Elizondo dissembled and said that former presidents and high officials said that there is “something to” the UFO issue. Not the same thing.
 
Meanwhile, just because bad things come in threes, Graham Hancock announced that a second season of his documentary series Ancient Apocalypse will stream on Netflix on October 16. The sequel to 2022’s media sensation is subtitled “The Americas” and will focus on trying to “prove” evidence of a lost Ice Age civilization in the Western hemisphere. The show’s trailer makes clear that much of it will reflect claims made in Hancock’s 2019 book America Before, which I reviewed when it was released.

With all of this going on, I did not even bother to dive in to the new claim from former America Unearthed host Scott F. Wolter that he discovered Mary Magdalene was previously married to John the Baptist and had a son named Jesus (pronounced Hay-Seuss) before she married the more famous Jesus. I have no idea where he got that idea from.