‘I get the UFO question?’ New Jersey’s Chris Christie promises honesty on aliens in 1st Republican presidential debate

One of the last things you’d expect with stuffy politicians facing off in the first Republican Presidential Primary Debate is a discussion on the controversial subject of UFOs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena as they’re now known, but that’s exactly what happened last night.

The awkward moment in the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Wednesday night (Aug. 23) featuring eight potential presidential candidates came when moderator Martha MacCallum took aim at former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to ask his opinion about a president’s responsibility to provide the American public with the truth about the UFO topic.

«I get the UFO question?» Christie responded with a smile. Christie was a good sport about the unexpected topic that was specifically lobbed at him, being queried on his own thoughts regarding transparency with the country concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in the wake of intriguing congressional hearings on the subject this past July.

«The job of the president of the United States is to level with the American people about everything. The job of the president of the United States is to stand for truth,» Christie replied.

Related: UFO whistleblower tells Congress the US government is hiding evidence of ‘non-human intelligence’

«Especially coming from a woman from New Jersey, I think it’s horrible that just because I’m from New Jersey, you asked me about unidentified flying objects and Martians. We’re different but we’re not that different.»

This New Jersey connection is in reference to Orson Welles’ infamous Mercury Theatre radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ «War of the Worlds» back on October 30, 1938 when a panicking public believed that hostile Martian tripod machines were actually rampaging around the countryside near Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

The subject of UFOs or UAP has taken center stage in Washington, D.C. recently as federal agencies and even the Department of Defense have begun making public statements that seem to indicate pilots and other military personnel have been encountering anomalous objects that display advanced capabilities with increasing frequency.

The Department of Defense (DOD) even created an office known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in order to detect and identify UAP in American airspace. 

Despite cataloging hundreds of reports, the head of the office told members of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services in April 2023 that AARO «has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.»

Then, in July, a U.S. military and intelligence community veteran told a Congressional subcommittee that the American government is hiding a «multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program» and is in possession of «non-human spacecraft.» 

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.