Dr. Phil on UFO files: 'There has been a massive cover-up' | Reality Check

In this episode of “Reality Check,” Ross Coulthart sits down with Dr. Phil McGraw, the psychologist and television host the White House invited to review the latest tranche of UFO files before it reached the public. Dr. Phil explains why an administration weighing disclosure went looking for a trusted voice rather than an astrophysicist, and what changed his mind once he started reading the government’s own words: from Lt. General Nathan Twining’s 1947 assessment that the phenomenon was something real and not visionary, to the 1949 classified conference at Los Alamos convened over sightings above America’s nuclear weapons sites, to the CIA’s Robertson Panel strategy of publicizing cases already debunked and saying nothing about the ones that weren’t, to the JANAP directives that put military and commercial pilots under threat of prison, heavy fines and the Espionage Act for describing what they saw.

He tells Coulthart the imagery released so far is intentionally grainy, that far better gun camera video and radar tracks exist and that Reps. Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna are helping him press for their release. Drawing on close to 50 years of sitting with people through the worst losses a person can absorb, Dr. Phil rejects the argument that Americans are too fragile to be told, calling it a patronizing view, while arguing the government owes real support to the people who will struggle with it. Two things he says he will state with confidence to the American public: There has been a huge cover-up and there are things in our atmosphere we cannot explain and did not build.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation.