Every President Since Roswell Has Known | Stephen Bassett

Show Transcript

Every single president since Roswell has known about the ET presence, be assured of that. For 78 years, it's been the equivalent of the emperor's new clothes where the emperor is brought out in front of the village people and told that he has a wonderful new set of clothes because they convinced him that they were real, but in fact there's no clothes and the emperor is naked. Disclosure is the only thing I can even come close to imagining that can change this road to oblivion.

Stephen, welcome to Shifting the Paradigm. How are you today? I am fine dear, it's a pleasure to be with you on this fine day. Thank you for being here. You've been dedicating your life to this topic for decades, and it seems like you've seen it all, heard it all, and can really distinguish the truth from the lies. For those that are hearing about you for the first time, who's Steven Bassett and why did you get so passionately involved in UFO disclosure?

I've devoted the last 30 years of my life to this issue. I made a simple choice back in 1995 that everything else I was doing just meant nothing to me, and naturally wasn't going very well. If things don't mean much to you, why should they go well? This issue had always been with me, and I started to look at it and thought, "I think this may be something I want to jump into." Not as a business, I assure you.

The thing that clinched it for me was John Mack's book "Abduction." It said to me, "This thing is happening, it's going to happen, it's going to be huge, and this is what I think I'd like to do if I can find a way in." Fortunately, there was an address and phone number in the back of the book. I called them up and somehow convinced them to let me volunteer, which is something I wish I had done when I was younger because you can volunteer for almost anything. I spent four months there, and it was wonderful. It got me going, and I realized the path I needed to take.

The Political Approach to Disclosure

I realized the path was based on a simple idea: the presence of these technologically advanced non-humans, which as far as I'm concerned are from other stars. The problem wasn't science or proving it—there had been more than enough proof, decades of research and books and sightings and reports. The problem was that it was a national security classified matter being withheld for "national security," which is a political matter. That means it needs a political solution.

So I said, "Okay, I'm going to go for the politics." I knew Washington very well, having lived in and out of that area my whole life. It occurred to me that no one had ever registered as a lobbyist for this issue because it was stigmatized. So I said, "I'll be the first one." I finally arrived on July 4th, 1996, got registered, and became the first person to register as a lobbyist for UAP disclosure.

Could I do any lobbying? No. Nobody knew anyone to talk to as a UAP lobbyist, I assure you. But it was a marker, a simple statement that if this issue is real and therefore as important as one can imagine, there should be a lobby. Every other issue has one. The Washington Post eventually found out about it because they check all the lobbying registrations. They sent out a reporter, did a big interview with a photo, and suddenly I was a thing. I think the next person who registered as a lobbyist for this cause was about 18 years later.

What I ended up doing is lobbying the media. I understood that the way to Congress, back in the early days in the late 90s, was not going up on the hill and begging people to talk to you—it was hitting the media with constant press releases on this issue and giving interviews if you could get them. The politics would follow as people would notice the articles. I have given approaching 2,000 interviews since then and have had about 600 articles written about the subject which included me or Paradigm Research Group.

I've also created an archive on my site where I have linked anyone who goes there to 16,000 articles going all the way back to 1947, which is only a fraction of the total amount of media coverage. In fact, the media has covered this thing pretty well. What they haven't done is investigated it—they haven't pushed the government. In the last seven years, they've really covered it. I've got 7,000 articles linked since 2017.

The 78-Year Truth Embargo

I am not impressed with the presence of extraterrestrials. I was pretty sure that was the case when I was a teenager. There was plenty you could read that clearly pointed to that. So I just said, "Yeah, there's ETs here. I can't wait to hear more about that from my government." Of course, all those years—my entire life—I'm not shocked at all.

What impresses me more than the presence of extraterrestrials, which I'm certainly glad they're here, is that the United States government was able to embargo that truth for 78 years—still technically, in spite of the fact that the ETs can come and go, do whatever the hell they want. What they were doing was starting to be reported not hundreds of times, not thousands of times, but hundreds of thousands of times. Untold numbers of sightings, scores of thousands investigated, maybe 100,000+ investigated. Then the contact reports started emerging in the 1980s, amassing probably 300,000 to 500,000 reports submitted privately to researchers.

Yet the truth embargo continued. Media coverage included tens of thousands of articles going all the way back to 1947, alluding to it, talking about it. As you move forward, the articles get more robust, with less stigma and less debunking. Yet the truth embargo abided. Then the documentaries came out, and the books. How did they do that? This is what impresses me. How were they able to convince the American people, the academics, the scientists, the journalists—everyone—that this was not an issue you want to get into for 78 years?

It's the equivalent of the emperor's new clothes, where the emperor is brought out in front of the village people and told that he has a wonderful new set of clothes because they convinced him they were real, but in fact there's no clothes and the emperor is naked. They managed to convince us the emperor had some new clothes for 78 years. That's unbelievable. How did they do that in a democratic society?

If this was a dictatorship for the last seven or eight decades, I'd understand—"Yeah, crazy, there's no ETs here," and if you want to say otherwise we'll be happy to take you out back and shoot you. So this is an amazing story which one day will be told in a streaming four-part, four-season series called "Truth Embargo" or some massive movie, which I'd love to be involved in. That is impressive, and that's what I've been dealing with for this last 30 years.

What is amazing, of course, is that it's about to end. Finally, after 78 years, we're this close to having the truth embargo end and the American people and the world's people being told, "Oh yeah, we've got some technologically advanced non-humans here doing all kinds of things. Sorry we didn't tell you sooner—that was a national security thing, you know what I mean?"

How the Truth Embargo Succeeded

The truth embargo succeeded for many reasons. One of the most powerful things it did was stigmatize the issue, undermine it, and almost ghettoize it literally. In other words, if you want to go there, fine, but you're going to have to go into this intellectual ghetto where people are not allowed to be touched or talked to. So the demonizing of it was very effective.

It had many effects, including limiting the amount of media coverage and how far they would go. But one of its most important and powerful effects was money. You stigmatize the issue to the degree this was stigmatized, and nobody wants to put money into it. Nobody wants to be attached to it. No foundations are going to say, "Oh yeah, this is something that could use our funds." No private individuals either.

So this issue, this 78-year activist movement, is probably the least funded movement of its type in history. It's extraordinary—almost no money compared to the importance of the issue. This has been effective. Now it's starting to change finally, and that's not surprising. As the truth embargo collapses, the ability and willingness of people to put funds into the effort to get this truth out is getting better, but it has been a really tough 70-some years.

Recent Developments in Disclosure

It seems that people's minds are much more open now. More people are talking about this—there are so many movies, documentaries, podcasts, TV shows. The media is covering it. We're living in very exciting times. While we might feel so close, we got recent information that the UFO hearings that were meant to take place in May have been postponed or cancelled according to a staffer on Burlson's team, right after Grush got his clearance back. What's going on in your opinion? Why this sudden halt out of nowhere?

It's not a halt, and the hearings haven't been cancelled. The political process that's setting up the president to be able to come forward, with all the appropriate elements needed—such as witnesses being able to privately talk to members of Congress, hearings finally being held, substantial media coverage, and legislation—90-95% or more of all those needed things have happened in the last seven years. That gives you a sense of how robust the disclosure process is.

Naturally, when you're involved in that, there's going to be some setbacks. You go forward, you come back, there are changes. But that's normal in any major political process.

Representative Luna, who is sort of leading things out of the House Oversight Committee right now (though there are a number of people on the committee, including Burlson, Mace, Burchett, and now Comr, who are pushing this), wanted to have a SCIF and a hearing in that order. She announced that last month. The SCIF was going to be significant—they've had trouble getting SCIFs, which is essentially the "cone of silence," a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility where classified people can speak to those who have clearance to hear it.

She wanted that, and it was going to be robust with several people in it, not only Grush but I think Alzando and maybe some others. Why did she want that? Not because she might not be able to relay that information, but because she could use the information from the SCIF to make decisions about how to structure a hearing, which questions to ask, and so forth.

The hearing was scheduled for the week of May 12th. It also corresponded with a May 1st briefing on the Hill—not a hearing but a briefing by a third-party entity called the UDP Disclosure Fund. That was a big deal and went well. Seven people gave remarks and were asked questions by the moderator, Ulando, with a very full-packed audience. It was live-streamed to the world and is still available—very significant.

But the SCIF had to be postponed because one or more of the people they needed in it were not available. Because the SCIF was postponed, she made the decision to postpone the hearing as well. The SCIF is now scheduled for the end of the month, and the hearing will certainly take place in June.

She's also mentioned publicly that she wants two hearings—one for government witnesses, which I hope will include the Malmstrom Air Force Base commanders who witnessed the shutdown of ICBMs and have wanted to testify for 30 years. Every member of the committee has received several copies of their witness statements. Representative Mace actually interviewed Bob Salas, the leader of these witnesses, who has been trying to get in front of a committee under oath for some time, and indicated her favorable opinion of having them testify.

And then she wants a hearing for appointees. A lot of people overlook that—they didn't realize how important that little statement was. What's the difference between appointees and witnesses? Witnesses are people usually working in the military or intelligence world who have important information to relay. But an appointee is referring to Trump appointees—people appointed to positions like the Director of the CIA, the Secretary of Defense, under-secretaries, and others in departments relevant to national security.

If she brings those in and they take an oath and sit down in front of that committee—and I think the hearing she's talking about may be in front of the entire Oversight and Accountability Committee, which has 50-some members—they would be asked questions about this under oath. Think about that. What do you do if you're an Under Secretary of Defense appointed by the president, sitting under oath and being asked about Grush or crash vehicles or any of the many things that have now become public domain? Do you say "I wasn't aware of it" (not good), or "I really can't discuss it" (not good), or give some ridiculous roundabout statement that means nothing (not good)? This could get very interesting.

So let me assure you, the political legislative congressional process is still well underway. It's not going to turn around. There have been strong statements by a number of people within the House—they're not going to stop. Schumer has made it clear he's not going to stop.

Two things happened that many of your viewers may not know about. Three months ago, Representative Burlson, a moderate Republican who sits on the House Oversight Committee—a very well-liked gentleman out of the seventh district of Missouri—made a statement on News Nation calling on the president to disclose via executive order. He said, "I've been reaching out to Trump's campaign and to his policy team trying to get them to consider UFO disclosure." A lot of people probably never saw that.

Then just a week or two ago, when President Trump put out a tweet that they're succeeding in getting the JFK records, the RFK records, and the MLK records, as part of the mandate of the task force on declassifying federal secrets (set up by the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who put Luna in charge with potential subpoena power), Senator Schumer sent an email to the president asking him to also declassify the UAP files. Schumer is the Democratic ranking member, the minority leader of the Senate.

And Luna made a recent statement that the UAP issue is the most bipartisan investigation in the history of the country.

Trump as the Disclosure President

Everything that's been happening in the last four or five months, but certainly the last year and a half—going back to the Grush hearing in front of the Oversight Committee and the submissions of the UAP Disclosure Act—has established a platform, an adequate platform, for the President of the United States to step up to a microphone and say, "I've checked with many of the people involved in the things you've been seeing and talked to some of my appointees, and I can confirm to you today that in fact, yes, there is advanced non-human technology present, beings, and we do have crash vehicles. A great effort is going to be made to start presenting all of the information related to that to the American people in an organized, responsible way through the UAP Disclosure Act, and ultimately you will know everything."

Are you implying that President Donald Trump will be the disclosure president? Absolutely. It's all lined up. He's going to be the disclosure president because he still has three and a half years left—not that I think it's going to take that long—and this issue is literally coming to a head right now.

So the idea that somehow all this progress being made legislatively, and all the statements coming out from people of high rank and station that "there's ETs here," will somehow survive—that the truth embargo will continue to exist like a zombie, like the walking dead, just kind of walking around Capitol Hill—no. It's going to fall to President Trump to be the disclosure president. He could do it tomorrow.

Now, there's a lot going on in the world—there's always a lot going on in the world. There's a lot on his plate, a tremendous amount of political unrest and division, I get it. But we have one president, and disclosure (capital D) can only come from the president or another head of state. I remind the Pentagon: there are other heads of state out there, and one of them might just disclose this, in which case you're going to have a lot of egg on your face and tough questions to answer. But disclosure is disclosure regardless of which head of state it comes from.

The situation is such that the president can do it now. Nobody is going to be shocked or surprised, and it's done. For those that would be displeased by that because of their political position, I'm sorry, but I don't have much sympathy. Disclosure is probably the single most important event in human history, as far as I'm concerned, and it transcends politics and religion.

If President Trump discloses, by God, he is the disclosure president, and he will receive an enormous historical legacy and political legacy. But those afraid that he'll rule the post-disclosure world—no, that's not going to happen, because other heads of state will jump in very fast. They're not going to sit around and wait to see how it goes. They're going to come forward with easy confirmation that their nation has known about this for some time, one after another.

People say, "Won't that be awkward for them?" No, it's simple. If the Prime Minister of the UK comes forward and says, "Yes, the United Kingdom has known about this presence, and we have substantial documentary evidence," and UK citizens ask, "Why didn't you tell us sooner?" they will simply say, "We deferred to the United States on this issue because it is the most powerful nation in the world. It was key to the defeat of the Axis powers who would have conquered the United Kingdom. It's also the biggest nuclear power, and we're still in and have been in the entire time a cold war and a nuclear arms race. We deferred to our ally, the United States, on when this would be disclosed. We were not going to cut in line."

The same thing will come from Canada and Australia, the French, the Germans—all of them will say that. Now, Xi Jinping will have a different position. When he confirms it and the press asks him why he didn't tell them, basically he'll say, "Because I didn't think it was in the best interest of China. This press conference is over." Same for Vladimir Putin: "It wasn't in the best interest of Russia or the Soviet Union, and so we didn't. No more questions."

So they're not going to have a problem, and neither are our allies. Therefore, from that moment forward after disclosure has taken place, it's going to be a global engagement of leaders of nations coming together to discuss how they're going to conduct their affairs in the post-disclosure world, how they're going to inform their people, and so forth.

The Potential Impact of Disclosure

And hopefully—this is why I do what I do, it's why Danny Sheehan does what he does, it's why everybody I know has literally committed their life to this—is that these nations will also be talking about, in light of the fact that the whole world is now fully aware of the reality that we're not the only intelligent species in this galaxy, we're not the most advanced civilization, and if they're from the stars as I think will get confirmed soon enough, there are unlimited possibilities in terms of how we might engage the larger galaxy (not the whole galaxy, just what's nearby).

Should we reassess our affairs? Should we reassess how we are dealing with each other? Is it in our interest to have 12,000 nuclear weapons ready to launch at any time and destroy everything we've built? Is it in our interest to have endless conflicts between ethnicities and religions? Can we not deal with that?

It is the hope that this can happen because the worldview change that will emerge from this disclosure event—which might be magnified by open contact, which I think could happen in a relatively short time after we finally disclose to ourselves and the world this truth—may even magnify this change of perspective. We might then be able to get out of this absurd, dangerous, grotesque situation we're in.

When Roswell took place, there were about 2.3 billion people in the world. Now there are 8.3 billion, and in those 78 years another 4 billion have come and gone, meaning that 10 billion people have come into this world since Roswell. Every one of them needing food, clothing, housing, government, structures, resources, energy, and everything else. Disclosure is the only thing I can even come close to imagining that can change this road to oblivion.

Reagan's UN Speech and Presidential Knowledge

I really like the way that you phrase everything, putting in the explanations of the population and this being the most important conversation that humanity is having. The way that you expressed it, that this will bring us together—the first thing that came to mind was obviously Ronald Reagan's speech that he gave to the UN. Do we need to have an outside threat to bring us together? It seems that time and time again, that answer might be a solid yes.

Let me respond to what you just said. Reagan knew about this. Every single president since Roswell has known about the ET presence. Be assured of that. All right? Every single president. There is no way that the military intelligence complex, which has had several crash vehicles (maybe even one from 1933), as well as bodies, has been able to keep that from a president. It's simply not possible.

There are people who would literally tip the president off. In other words, it doesn't have to be formal—it just has to be somebody who realizes the president needs to know, and they just happen to be in a meeting, step off in a hallway and say, "Look..." It's just not possible that a president is kept from this. It doesn't mean the president's going to do anything. It doesn't mean the president's going to suddenly say, "Oh, let's disclose." But every single president has known, including Reagan.

So when he addressed and made those statements to the UN and elsewhere, this was reflecting that he did know this, and he felt that this was something he could speak to. The way he addressed it back then, which was a much different time, is that wouldn't we all come together if there was a threat? Which is technically true, except in this case there's a problem he wasn't going to elaborate on.

If in fact there is a threat from extraterrestrials, we can come together all we want—we haven't got a snowball's chance. We lose. Whatever they want to do to us, they can do to us. They can wipe us off the face of the earth. You need to know a little astrophysics and physics to maybe understand that, but we might be able to burrow underground and a few of us survive. But if they wanted us gone, we'd be gone. So that can't be true, right? It simply can't be true because that ain't going to work. We'll come together for a short while, and then they're going to deal with this, and that's going to be the end of us.

Now it turns out that they're not a threat in any way that is truly significant. There are a few things one could point to and be a little concerned about, but a fundamental threat? No, they're not. Fortunately for us, it turns out, and will turn out, that their existence—the fact that they have been engaging us not only in the 20th century but possibly going back deep in the past—the fact that we are part of a galaxy that has plenty of life and plenty of civilizations, is so extraordinary. It is such a profound view change, a paradigm shift unprecedented, that it can also bring us together.

In other words, the idea embedded in our civilization and almost in our DNA that this is a zero-sum universe—anything you get, somebody has to lose; any advance you make, somebody has to go down; there's always going to be winners and losers; the fact that violence is fundamental to intelligent life—is bogus. But we're still trapped in that mindset, that world, and so everything is in terms of violence and power. Therefore, that must be true for extraterrestrials. Apparently not.

But for whatever reason, those 13 presidents could not succeed or were not willing to attack this embargo and end it. This president is different from those 13. He is independent—meaning he is independent of many norms, independent of strong advisors that could sway him this way or that way. He's unique, and for that reason, the barrier between him and doing what those other 13 presidents wouldn't do is very, very low. So for that and many other reasons, he will be the disclosure president.

The Paradigm Clock and Disclosure Timeline

On the paradigm clock that your organization tracks, which measures the proximity to disclosure, where are we if 12:00 is disclosure?

The paradigm clock I created way back in 1978—midnight is disclosure—was kind of a cool clock. I promoted it and tracked it and did a lot with it, but it sometimes just fizzled out. But it still exists in a sense. I created it to match up with the Doomsday Clock, which was created in 1947 and is still very much covered and dealt with by physicists who assess how close we are to nuclear war. They're sort of feeling a little guilty about the fact that they helped build the damn thing.

The Doomsday Clock is now the closest it's ever been to nuclear war. I think it's 89 seconds. Frankly, it could be 20 seconds as far as I'm concerned. So the Paradigm Clock was intended to marry that in a sense. I had to retroactively start it in '47 and then kind of run it forward.

But I still use it as a powerful metaphor for my lifetime, which goes right back to the beginning of this issue—the UAP era—and everybody else of this time. We have been living while there's a race going on between two clocks to midnight, and the question is: which one gets there first? Nuclear war is midnight on the Doomsday Clock; disclosure is midnight on the Paradigm Clock.

The Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds. I put the Paradigm Clock much closer—I put it at like 10 seconds to midnight. Why? Because the Doomsday Clock is close to a midnight which is catastrophic, so there's still some resistance from states and leaders. Whereas the Paradigm Clock is approaching a midnight which is not destructive—it's incredibly positive, a transformation. So the resistance is falling apart, coming down, and I'm going to put it at 10 seconds to midnight.

What if they were almost one and the same—that right when there was meant to be a nuclear war, that's when we get disclosure, where everything just stops midair?

Oh, no, that's not disclosure—you're talking about intervention. It's like being told on your deathbed that actually your parents were not your parents, you were adopted. I mean, you know, it's like, "Oh, thank you."

Look, I don't blame anybody, given the circumstances and the race between these two clocks, from hoping that if we get stupid enough to actually launch some of these nukes, the ETs would come down and say, "You idiots," and just turn them off. And that is supported by the fact that we have absolute confirmatory evidence that the ETs have turned off our ICBMs in situ in their silos on a number of occasions. We have the witnesses to that, and they're ready to testify before Congress.

By the way, three of those witnesses will be at the Contact in the Desert conference coming up May 29-June 2—Captain Jameson, Captain Shindelle, and Captain Salas. They're going to be there in a panel, and Captain Salas is going to present about this. That's going to be one hell of a panel—it's going to be extraordinary. So that's going to be featured at Contact in the Desert.

Because they have shut down our missiles on a number of occasions, and Soviet missiles, there is a reasonable expectation by some people that if we launch them, they'll shut them down in the air, or somehow they'll know in advance we're going to launch them and shut down our launch systems. But there's an awful lot of missiles and an awful lot of silos. They're in the ground, they're in the oceans. It might be possible, but it's a potentially dangerous assumption.

I discourage that thinking for a very simple reason: to the extent that you or any leader thinks they might intervene in a nuclear launch, it simply reduces the motivation to start negotiating the elimination of these things. "Don't worry, they'll take care of it." Big gamble. Are you willing to gamble your entire civilization on a hunch that they would shut them down? No. So I assume they will not.

Congressional Hearings and Progress

I remember I believe it was in 2022 when we got our first hearing in 55+ years with the AOIMSG, and Rep. Gallagher brought up the Malmstrom Air Force Base, kind of touching on what Robert Salas had encountered. Scott Bray and Ronald Moultrie were like, "I don't know what you're talking about. What is Malmstrom?" It was so shocking because that was such a specific case with a specific question, and the way that they deflected it was disappointing. But that hearing in particular really set the foundation for the other hearings that have happened and will come in the future—we're not going to take that nonsense anymore, those silly lame answers. And with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, she's definitely demonstrated that she's been very concise and clear during her hearings: "I just want a yes or no answer. Give me the information, don't go in a roundabout way."

Here's the way I look at it. A race gets underway—it's like 400 meters, four laps—and your favorite runner is not really doing very well, but it's just the start of the race. The end of the truth embargo really gets underway in 2017, and it moves forward. There's a certain amount of progress in various ways. Eventually, we get a little legislation, and then we get the hearing with Moultrie and Bray—the first one since 1968. But it's part of the process—it's not the end of the race, it's the beginning. We're moving forward, and the fact that they had the hearing at all was what was important, not what those guys had to say.

In terms of how this has gone forward, this is something I've repeated hundreds of times, and I'm going to continue because it's something that every American needs to understand to minimize anxieties. Everything that has happened since the New York Times articles of December 2017—witnesses coming forward, talking privately to members of Congress, the media coverage increasing, some legislation, the hearings, the creation of AARO or the task force—everything that has been happening is NOT about trying to find out finally what this is. Not at all. Zero.

The US government has known what it is for decades. It's known what it is since Roswell. The government is well aware we have vehicles in the sky, crash vehicles in our hands, ET bodies. The government knows—those that need to know, and a lot of people that don't need to know, too.

So it's not about that at all, but I can understand why people are thinking, "Oh, they set up AARO to see, get some reports in, study them, and come up with an understanding of what is this thing going on." No, not at all.

So if it's not about finding out what's going on, what is it about? And this is where it gets tricky. Not everybody involved in this elaborate process, now seven years in the making, may know this. They may think that it is about trying to find out what's going on, and they're playing their role, whether they're passing legislation or sitting on a committee. Not everybody understands what I'm about to say, even the ones that are involved, but it applies to them and everyone else.

All of this is about getting disclosure. A substantial element within the military intelligence complex came to the realization that the truth embargo was not going to live forever, that its time was coming to an end. Obviously, that's going to be a problem—it's a very big deal—and so there was a need to prepare for it.

In other words, worst-case scenario: nothing has been happening the last seven years, and then Xi Jinping comes out and just confirms the ET presence on a Monday, brings out all kinds of evidence. He's the disclosure head of state. The Chinese people are going crazy, and the rest of the world is like, "What the hell?" That could happen at any time. Say it happened on Monday—guess what happens Tuesday? Every reporter in the country is cramming every briefing room in Washington and every other place they can get to, asking a torrent of questions: what, what, what, what? And there's no legislation, there's no AARO, there's no lead-up, the Congress is not involved. It's a fiasco, a catastrophe.

So they understood: "My God, we have got to get this done. It would be nice if we were the country that ended the truth embargo, but we've got to get there." Now, they could have just had the president come out and do it, or forced the president to do it, but again, without all this infrastructure, without all this prelude, it would be chaos.

So they set about to get it done. The dilemma they had was they couldn't tell you why. They couldn't come out and say, "We're going to start doing legislation, hold hearings, listen to witnesses, get Congress involved, and do all the things we need to do because there are extraterrestrials here and we need to prepare to tell you that"—because, of course, then they'd have just told you that.

So they have a catch-22. They can't tell you why they're doing it because they're doing it so they can tell you in an orderly way. When President Trump discloses, we'll have ample legislation (and probably more that'll be added) to deal with the post-disclosure revealing process. We'll have Congress fully involved, plenty of witness testimony, AARO, and the public will have had time to figure out that things are moving forward. So when the president discloses, we're ready for it—ready to deal with all the questions, the media, and everything else, and deal with getting the information to the public.

That's what's tough. People are going, "What?" And I'm saying, once you see it that way, whether you're a member of Congress or the media, once you understand this is not about finding out what the hell this is, it's about getting to the point where a president can disclose it and things will then go forward hopefully well—that's what it's about. Then it makes sense. That's one of the things I repeat over and over again, and I encourage people to understand: that's what's going on. If you think about it that way, you'll start to catch on, and it'll be a lot less unnerving.

Those that don't get that—every little thing that happens, they go on Twitter and attack this person and that person, complaining it doesn't make sense, this photo and that photo and everything else—