Lue Elizondo on Donald Trump, Jr.'s Podcast Talks UFOs and Praises Trump, Sr.

​Last night, UFO advocate Lue Elizondo appeared on Donald Trump, Jr.’s Triggered podcast as part of his book tour promoting his memoir Imminent. His choice of venue was quite shocking considering this is an election year and Elizondo appeared on a podcast hosted by the son of a major party candidate who is himself a far-right political figure. During the interview, Elizondo praised Donald Trump, Sr. and suggested that a second Trump presidency would benefit UFO “disclosure.”

Screenshot of Lue Elizondo on Donald Trump, Jr.'s "Triggered" podcast.

​Elizondo has appeared in a range of media outlets to promote his book, including CBS Mornings and The Daily Show, but this is his first appearance on an explicitly partisan political outlet. (The Daily Show, while left-leaning, is a general interest current affairs show, not a partisan opinion program.) Elizondo used the time to praise the elder Trump:

Elizondo: Look, I'll be honest with you. Your father was one of the first elected officials to ever publicly take this topic seriously. And there's a lot of men and women in uniform right now that are very, very grateful for him being courageous and taking the first step. Look, I gotta tell you, he's gonna be remembered in history very favorably for that alone. He was the first one to actually champion this cause.
 
Trump, Jr.: Well, I appreciate that.

​Elizondo also praised Trump ally Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the UFO issue and claimed that a second Trump Administration, including RFK, would be very good on UFOs. (He also praised UFO nut John Podesta, a Democrat, on the other side.)
 
To his credit, the younger Trump, despite alternating between looking bored when it wasn’t his turn to speak, and shouting loudly about trans people when it was, nevertheless noted that Elizondo wildly exaggerated the senior Trump’s interest in UFOs. Trump Jr. said that he raised the issue with his father, and he “sort of looked at me and laughed like it was, like, he just sort of blew it off.”
 
Trump Jr. ranted about “trans admirals” and “our wokest” military members letting space aliens slip through our national defenses and complained that the military is at risk due to LGBTQ people and liberal ideas about race. Elizondo seemed to agree with Trump Jr., saying that no “external interests” should be “pushing down” on the military, though he backed off slightly on Trump’s framing by saying that the military should be “asexual.” I assume he means that it should not be concerned with members’ sexuality, despite the odd choice of word. Nevertheless, he lamented “that isn’t the case.”
 
Trump, Jr. asked Elizondo why, if we all have HD cameras in our iPhones, no one has clear photos of alien spaceships. Elizondo replied that there are “very good” smartphone photos of UFOs—which is news to me. Trump also asked Elizondo if “aliens” are real, and Elizondo dissembled, saying that he would never use the word “alien” and then launching into a longwinded story about the discovery of bacteria to suggest that there may be hidden intelligences under the sea, not just in the sky. “All these options have to be on the table until they are no longer on the table.” Notably, though, in all the blather, he never actually said anything definitive about UFOs being controlled by non-human intelligence, be it fish, phantom, or extraterrestrial. He used a lot of words to say nothing of substance.
 
In what is perhaps the weirdest part of the whole interview, Elizondo concluded by saying that his beliefs about what UFOs really are don’t matter and what really matters is “how the American people feel” about what UFOs really are and what they decide to do about them. After spending seven years claiming (as his book title implies) that UFOs are an “imminent” threat, he says it would be “great” if Americans chose to do “nothing” about UFOs, so long as they are first given the “truth”—that truth being what? Not aliens, since Elizondo says he doesn’t know that. I guess the “truth” is the feeling of mystery and giddy excitement of communing with hypothetical fish people. I kid; he seems to be more or less directly saying that the public should be convinced of a potential non-human intelligence threat in order to create political will to spend even more money on Elizondo’s (and his defense contractor bosses’) favored projects.
 
Elizondo probably misjudged his audience a bit in this appearance. He used too much jargon and blathered about highly specific issues and stories familiar mostly to those deeply invested in ufology. Trump, Jr.’s eyes glazed over several times, and he occasionally stopped Elizondo and asked him to explain what he was talking about. Elizondo’s goal seemed to be to appear as a deeply informed insider, so perhaps baffling the MAGA faithful with confusing terminology and unexplained references is all part of the package. But would it make listeners want to buy his book?
 
I would posit that his failure to actually tie his longwinded stump speech to his book, his own life story, and why anyone would want to hear more is actually counterproductive when it comes to sales. People buy stories, not claims, and one thing Elizondo has been notably poor at doing is crafting his own memoir into a compelling story. He is too obsessed with the mechanics of UFO investigation and the inside-baseball of bureaucratic infighting to deliver a compelling personal story to form an emotional (and thus parasocial) relationship with his audience.