IHIP News - MAGA in Meltdown As FBI Drops More Declassified Files; Trump Reacts With Bizarre Post!

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

The Trump administration is botching the roll out of formerly classified files and its not working as the distraction he was hoping it would be. With special guest @paynelindsey!Pre-order Jennifer’s new book Not Today, Fascists today: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcastFollow Us:I've Had It Podcast: @IvehaditpodcastJennifer Welch: @mizzwelchSpecial Guest: Payne Lindsey: @paynelindseySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, the president's dementia is reaching way like all-time high levels. And now he's posting AI-generated photos of himself with aliens. Let's pop this up. There is Trump with an alien that is shackled on a military base with CIA and military personnel. Obviously, it's real that he posted this, but it is a fake photo. And joining me on IHIP News today to discuss this is Payne Lindsay. He is an investigative journalist and podcaster known for Up and Vanished, High Strange, which is an incredible UFO docu series, podcast series, and radio rental pain.

How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me back. It's been too long. What do you make of the government and the president dipping into all this UFO stuff? Wait, can we go back to that picture real quick? Yeah. Let's look at that again.

Are his hands not even shackled together? Well, I think so there's the risk. and then see the shackle and it goes to the other wrist of the alien. Why does Trump's AI always look worse than regular AI? You know what I mean? Like what happens he uses? Everything worse. Oh, right.

Like get the update. So I want to talk to you about UFOs. Last week, the government, his government, released over 160 declassified videos like these. Pop this up. So they're releasing all this shit. And I know that you have been in this genre and investigating this yourself for the better part of what the last three or four years. Yeah. And so give me your take on all of this.

I mean, there's kind of just a basic conceptual idea here where if the government, no matter who's in charge, whatever, is releasing stuff from the Pentagon and saying, hey, we don't know what these are. Either they're lying about that or they're telling the truth. And I don't see what's to gain by saying we don't know what these things are. Or we have a major balloon problem that isn't. You know what I mean? Like everything can't be a balloon. To me that this should be a dead story. It's tired, right?

I mean, it's been around for too long. Why are we still talking about it? What do you mean it should be dead? Like there was nothing to it? Yeah, if there was absolutely nothing mysterious in the sky that could, could be, you know, other intelligence or something, then we would have stopped talking about it by now. And so for the United States government to claim, I don't know, we don't know what these are. When we know that we spend trillions of dollars year after year after year on the military and all of these things, are you not buying that?

I mean, I think that some people who are saying we don't know what they are are probably telling the truth. I don't think, you know, when it comes to government secrecy around UFOs, I don't think it's as simple as the man versus us. I mean, have you ever been to the DMV? It's like, we're not that organized, like, to keep secrets like that. And, I mean, even our best planes, like our fighter jets, we don't make those. You know, we don't even make our cars. So we outsource that stuff to private companies. Right.

If there were any, like, secrets like that to be kept. they're in those kind of departments, third party, not just, you know, I don't even think every president is privy to this kind of stuff unless they go digging around. And even if they do, who knows if they're going to actually be told everything by whoever might know it? What like top story, UFO story, you've investigated, you've spoken to a lot of people, which one above all has the most ferocity to you, was the most believable to you, and that made you go, oh shit, there's something to this. I mean, there's been a lot of accounts of people that I've talked to.

And, you know, they're first-hand accounts. So someone who claims they've been abducted or something. And I've talked to people where they were very convincing. Either way, they believed this. And so we're looking at either some other medical condition that we haven't really fully diagnosed because it's not schizophrenia. It's nothing else. You know, they had a one-off event where they're convinced this happened to them and it didn't or it did.

And so there's cases like that. And there's also mass sightings. I mean, even in Arizona, the Phoenix Lights. What were those again? You know, like flares? I don't think so. There's just a lot. There's a lot of stories that hold a lot of weight to me.

But to me, it's just kind of the stack of everything. just if we just kind of step back a little bit, it would just be silly to think that there's nothing here or we've lost our minds here or we're just bored. Let me ask you this. Is it a universal story that has similarities from like different decades and more importantly like different countries like maybe somebody in Ecuador and somebody in China who their paths would not cross? have similar stories. Is there like, you know how there's near death experiences and people have kind of... It's not just a U.S. problem.

And that was kind of one of my first thoughts, like when I got into researching it for real years ago, I mean, growing up, it's like Area 51 and it feels like a very American thing. Right. I think it's mostly because of pop culture. I mean, Steven Spielberg did a good job. Also, he couldn't have timed the movie release better. I mean, the PR team killed it. killed it. Disclosure Day? I mean, that's great. Yeah, it's worldwide. It's every country in the

world that has a real military intelligence. They have their own version of a program or files, and a lot of those countries are more open about putting them out. A lot of them have investigated the U.S. investigations into this. So it's not limited to the U.S. actually in season two of strange, I interviewed this guy in Wales. It was a classroom of like 15 kids and they all saw this very bizarre object and this being stepped out of it. And it was a huge mass sighting. And I mean, to this day, I'm like, what do you think it is that you saw? And everyone kind of says the same thing. They just go, I don't know, which is such a frustrating answer. But imagine seeing something that's so unfamiliar that you can't really categorize it or label it.

15. 15 kids. Teachers saw it too. Yep. And they all have the exact same account. Yes. They all drew it. I remember from one of your episodes something about maybe it was Belgium and the forest.

Yes. That's the Rendlesham incident. Tell my listeners about that. I mean, this is also one of the more infamous UFO stories. It was a military base in the UK, but it was a. American military base. Basically, the log line of the story is that there were these weird red lights scene that night,

and these guys go out to investigate it in the woods, and there's this old kind of creepy tape of the radio transmissions of him encountering this craft, and it's just doing things that are weird, like hovering above the ground. This one guy claims to have touched it, and there's all these strange symbols on it, There was a huge investigation into this.

And the results were muddy, murky. It made the news. Again, it's one of those things where it seems like every story that has either no rational explanation or the explanation that could be rationalized is something that's uncomfortable or weird, it just kind of gets pushed to the side. I think it's also human nature in terms of like, I don't know how to compute that. I don't have time for that, right? Right.

And it seems like, I mean, for me, I think, well, there hasn't been a smoking gun. But then when I listen to your high strange stuff, I'm like, these kind of are smoking guns, like 15 little kids in a teacher. Yeah, that would be my question actually. And it's a good one. I've asked myself, what is the smoking gun to you? What is the UFO smoking gun for you? Maybe it's true.

AI photo. Right. Clearly it's not that. that's getting us further away. So how much do you believe the government has on this? And how much do you think they're hiding from us? I think that it's when we say the government, I don't think the government at large has a whole bunch of stuff.

I think we're talking about, and this sounds super conspiratorial just in the description of it, but I think that we're talking about small, like black departments that are, which already exist, we know this, that are funded in secret, and there's not a lot of people who know everything. There are probably scientists and military intelligence, probably a lot of veterans who've been in it for a long time, and then everything else is kind of compartmentalized. So there might not be one singular person who knows everything.

I think that also kind of explains why we're all pointing fingers and asking each other questions because there isn't like a clear paper trail. of any of it. It's just kind of confused. So yeah, I think that to answer your question, yeah, the government definitely knows more about this stuff, but I think it's telling that people in Congress are asking, who are also part of the government, asking questions like, we don't know what the hell is going on. Why are they asking that? Because they actually don't know, and they think there's something going on. So clearly not everyone knows. some of the more credible accounts are like pilots that understand the way aircraft maneuvers

and they understand the skies like for me as a lay person if I'm on a plane and I look out and I see something that appears to be moving faster back oh my god it's a UFO right I could totally mistake it but these military pilots in particular have been like in these radar type situations where they've been locked or they've tried to lock things and they've seen movement of these crafts that defy anything that is their understanding of how advanced our technology in the air can go. Can you speak to that? Yeah, I mean, there's and there's dozens, if not hundreds of pilots who encountered this stuff. I mean, we're talking about the most advanced like fighter jets in the world,

the most advanced technology we have in terms of aircraft. and they know how to fly these things. They basically helped build the technology that humans use inside of it. And if that person is saying, I saw something that shouldn't be in the sky that I don't fundamentally understand, then that should be taken seriously. That guy's opinion is better than mine. I mean, I wouldn't even have the same sort of perception on something like that as they would. Didn't one of the astronauts that walked on the moon

Didn't he say that he saw? Yes. I mean, there's been a couple different accounts, but I can't remember if it was Buzz Aldrin or one of them, if you all will look it up, said that he was like stepping out on the moon and he's, I would think an NASA astronaut. I mean, the knowledge that these people have. Yes. Is beyond anything that's conceivable to me. When you have credible people like saying that they saw something that genuinely disturbed them or confuse them and they raise their hand about it, that should have some merit because they're

an expert of something and we give them credit there. So if they raise their hand about a red flag mystery, then maybe we should take it a little bit more seriously. And then again, why would that person make that up? Wouldn't they be more credible in the first place? It's such a muddy, murky, frustrating topic. But, you know, I do know that there are better quality videos. I mean, shit. We, our new iPhones can shoot movies, right? Yes. Um, so you could never convince me that our most advanced aircraft are stuck with these grainy dots. And so I do know, because I've, I've spoken to people who have seen them firsthand, there are way better quality images and videos, which I think is what Congress has really kind of

I've been pushing. Yeah. We got the shitty ones first, I guess. Yeah. That aren't just dots in the sky that, you know, are metallic craft and multiple angles and interacting in and around military bases and our aircraft where it'd be a little less, I mean, it's a little harder to say, well, it could be this, you know. But yeah, again, like, what's the smoking gun?

We're in the day of AI. I could probably create one of these things and make it look pretty damn convincing. Right. So it's either AI or it's a drone. Right. So we're kind of screwed there. What would it take for you to believe? And I think that question at this point would be some personal experience where you're like,

I don't know what to tell you, but I saw this and I just know it was off or wrong or different. a personal experience, you can't really beat that. Anything else, you'll just be judging a, you know, judging a blurry dot or what could be AI or what could be a drone. I think for me, the one thing that makes me pause and think, maybe there's something to this is to your point that you just said these very credible people. And when you have people in the military pilots and astronauts and NASA and not just exclusively to the United States, but then you start talking to other governments,

and you have these pilots that experience the same thing. Now, of course, some of this could be explained by the military testing out some sort of new technology. And you've covered that. For sure. But there appears to be the propulsion of a lot of these craft, aircraft, aircraft, that is beyond anything that we know. And that's what kind of makes me think maybe there is something to this.

And it would make sense that they would want to not tell the public about it. because recently when Trump said he was going to release all these files, it sparked a meltdown in right-wing Christian groups. Let's play this clip. God is the creator of the universe. He's never not going to create. So it's always been something in my mind to say, well, how can we be the only ones? Like, God's not going to stop creating just with us.

But the more I look into this, the more I see the Old Testament and what was told to us there, of fallen angels and Nephilim. I mean, this is in the Bible. There's nothing that says that fallen angels that Nephilim just disappeared. And so I believe that this could be an aspect of it. You know, there are things that we have seen that could resemble portals. And, you know, I mean, this is we serve an info. Okay.

That, of course, is dipshit Congresswoman Lauren Bobert. But this, if this is true. it causes an existential crisis for people that believe in the world in a very binary way. Like the God one day said, poof, he created the heavens and the earth and then this happened. If there is intelligent life, and when we think about how massive the universe is, I think it's probably very likely that a Goldilocks zone. And listener, the Goldilocks zone is like where the earth is, like distance from heat that can produce life. there's bound to be more Goldilocks zones. And if you think about how much we've progressed just in our lifetimes, I mean, like, this thing is incredible, the technology of this.

It would make sense that some form of intelligence could figure out how to do this. And so what do you make of these governments keeping it so close to the vest? Is it to keep order in society? I mean, just think about it. What is there to gain by revealing this big secret if it was there to be revealed? There's nothing to gain except for, hey, it's morally right that we should know the truth, right? Right. That's it.

There's no upside. I mean, other than we think it's fair. Yeah. Right? Yeah. What's there to gain? It only creates risk. whatever that is, whether people, you know, it causes disruption, you know, it goes against people's religion, you know, and like back to that clip, it's, you know, if you see a weird bright light in the sky, you're all of a sudden taking your belief system and applying it to something that's unknown. I mean, how many religions are there in the world? A lot. So we'd have to say that one of them is correct first, right? In order to apply religion to any of this stuff.

Yeah. So I feel like that doesn't really jive. What is a ghost, right? What is a spirit? What is an angel? Are those just all kind of just words we use that sound mythical or biblical that are applied to things that are unknown? I mean, I guess if it was like Christianity and there was like a paranormal thing and it was bad or felt frightening, then it would be a demon or something, right? Right. Or if it was good, it'd be an angel. But what if those things can exist, but they're not just, I don't know, we're trying to apply our way of thinking to something that we don't understand. Right. Like I like this analogy that I thought of one time where if we went back in time and we gave a caveman an iPhone, right, they could probably, like they might be able to turn it on, right? they wouldn't really know what to do with it. They couldn't charge it. They could definitely break it.

Do you think they could answer it? They would not know what it is and they probably, you know, think it was spooky, but they wouldn't know what to do with it. And so when it comes to the UFO stuff, I believe that there's enough general evidence and stories that feel credible out there to me that there have been times in the past where we've recovered vehicles that were. exotic craft, I guess, you would say.

And we're like, I don't know how to turn this shit on. Like this is beyond my understanding. And we know that because of, you know, the components that are in these metals or whatever it is. That's not from Earth or we haven't been able to do that. So I think that there is a level of, you know, if we're sitting here debating whether or not intelligent life has ever come here, but we're also saying that it's most likely true that they could exist. We just don't know how to get to A to B ourselves. Then if they ever have come here,

whatever that is, we're talking to a different level of advanced. Yeah. What's going on with Area 51? I mean, who knows? I went out there one time. I did. I mean, not like inside. I went to the the furthest place you can go at the gate before they shoot you. Or apparently is what they do. I didn't want to find out. Right, right. But, I mean, it's out there. And it is miles off the road.

And then once you even get into the gates, which I've not been, it's even like another 17 miles or so in. I mean, it's one of the best places in the world to test stuff like that. I mean, test aircraft, whether it's alien or not. It's a lot of space. It's kind of hard to see from any very, managed point, you know, and it's probably mostly underground. Yeah, who knows?

I think that there's been, there's been many stories about where these crafts may be or if they've been moved around. And again, it would be probably given to just select scientists trying to figure this out. And maybe they're only working on one little part of this. Okay. You brought up scientists and something that's been getting a lot of attention is these scientists that have gone missing. Yes.

Or died in the past few years. It sparked so much noise online that there was a federal investigation launched to investigate it. What do you think is going on here? And here is the screen group. Look at all of these scientists. And some have been shot. Some have gone missing. Some have died in rather mysterious manners.

And I think we're at a total of how many 15, 16? I think it's around 15 to 16. What do you make of that? I mean, it definitely started with, his name is Neil McAastland, I think is his name. Yeah, McCaslin was the first one that got a lot of news attention. And that's still just objectively, just by itself, is a strange disappearance. Where did that guy go? His wife doesn't know.

He just literally disappeared from his house. Without his cell phone, without him. Yeah. Yeah. Like, where, why, what? It's just, me, that's an odd disappearance regardless. But yeah, if you look at his military background and see who he's connected with, it does make you think that his disappearance could be a little bit more nefarious or something. I think that there's obviously a real pattern here of missing scientists, government people who had some sort of association with the UAP world.

What's the UAP? So, I mean, I prefer the term UFO. Unidentified aerial phenomenon. Okay, okay. The less cool way of saying UFO. Okay. I don't know why we ever dropped that one. You always change everything.

I know. UAP sounds dumb. It's the woke version of UFO. Yeah, it's like UFO. Stay classic with it. Yeah. You know what that means. Yeah.

But yeah, there's something going on. And, you know, I've talked to some insiders and some Congress people and other journalists who have been following a lot of these stories. and about a month ago, I was given a date, and I didn't have it really in the full context of what it meant. I knew that this particular date was important, and I knew roughly what it was associated with. I had a meeting on Capitol Hill. I recorded it, but I didn't put it out yet, and I was talking to a congressman about UFO stuff. and this individual accidentally said this person's name.

And in hindsight, I just listened back to the tape and I could tell that he didn't mean to let this name slip. So this date had this name. It turns out this person that he was referring to died a mysterious death on this day. And I was like, okay, I'm pretty sure of these things connect. And I did my own sort of true crime investigation into it, sent a few Phantom Records requests in Virginia, got nothing but strange responses back,

weird rules that don't seem to apply. I knew that it would definitely send her red flag up the system, why is someone looking into this? This is a very decorated military person. And then I did like a cryptic Instagram story a few weeks ago, saying that I know about this 39-year-old individual who was high-ranking in the military. who died of mysterious circumstances according to friends and family and other military buddies. And then the next day, the Daily Mail did an article on it. And all they said was just basically that.

So there's not a lot more meat to the bone yet. But I do know, I've been told the FBI is investigating this. And so there are some other cases that aren't just missing persons, but they're weird deaths. Well, there's the guy. suicide that he was a Yale professor thing he just answered his door and somebody shot him right and so here's what i think pain lindsay i don't trust the fbi because i think cash but tells a dip shit right i was i was like i was like yeah fbi's investigating this right why i mean we all know he's too busy getting drunk but i think journalism is the last

form of defense against this fascist regime i think the next pain lindsay gangbuster podcast you need to do a on all of these scientists. And each episode investigate these scientists, because I would be riveted by that, because this is just, it's interesting to me that, okay, obviously Trump is in the Epstein files. Everybody knows that. He wants to deflect from that.

But the UFO, he keeps using it and he keeps bringing it back up, combined with all of these deaths and disappearances. It's not one, it's not two. It's double digit death and disappearances. Yes. while we have these dipshits governing us. And so I think this is the next pain, Lindsay.

Would you do it? I would definitely do it. I mean, I kind of already have started that, to be honest. Oh. I've been asked by a million people to do this. And it's tough because everyone is acting so strange in these cases. I've covered so many missing persons cases and true crime stories. and every person involved in these cases are just acting weird about it.

It's just, I don't know if it's because of the current publicity and maybe the, I guess, the story that it's painting, but it's just weird to me. I had this sort of weird backstory with my grandpa that I've, I guess it's a lot of wishful thinking, I guess, but also what the fuck is going on. So my grandpa was like a weird, cool dude. A lot of UFO stories like surrounding him from my mom and my cousins and me.

And I recently looked up his obituary. And let me just read like a logline from this. This guy was definitely doing cool stuff and he's completely scrubbed from the internet. Your grandfather? Yes. Yes. So his name is Chester Payne. Okay. My mom's main name was Payne. This is just his obituary. Okay, during his years in the industry, his work took him to over 100 military bases. He participated directly in the flight of the latest aircrafts, often serving as flight crew member. 1974 certificate of merit by the Air Force Systems Command, 1985 recipient of the Kelly Johnson Award. He's in the Smithsonian Museum.

Called for work from the CIA, the Pentagon Air Force, retired in 1991 from Lockheed, continued working up until he died in 2010, and the CIA came to his deathbed. And there was a whole bunch of stuff in my grandpa's house that we don't know where it went. I'm like, wait a minute. Like, not to be all conspiracy, but...

It's weird. Wouldn't this guy, like, check a lot of the boxes of someone who would have been close? And knowing my grandpa, he was a lifer, right? Like, back then they were looking for guys, I mean, they still do. Looking for guys who will die with the secrets, right? Yeah. And he absolutely would have been one of those. So my aunt recently did a lot of digging.

she found one box of materials and she hasn't even opened it yet and I shouldn't even said that but it's it's hidden and it's uh I've not looked into it yet but a party wonders if there's some sort of like family angle where you know I can get into a pipeline of information I think the old regime of military veterans may have it be a part of a different network of the secret keeping. I think today would be very hard just to crack that open. But there's probably a couple nuggets laying around there. And maybe if we can paint a picture with that, get connected. I guess I'm applying it to stuff like this. You know, similar departments that my grandpa works in. Or it'd be cool if, you know, my grandpa just worked on UFO stuff. That would

be fun. I kind of want that to be true. It would be so cool. Yeah. Then you end up making all of Did you ever talk to your grandfather about UFOs or did he die before you were born? I talked to him like just casually before. You know, I've asked him questions like, you know, weird stuff in the sky and he would make comments like, you know, it would be silly to think that, you know, we're the only ones out there. This is like in the 90s. Right.

Right. So yeah, I don't know. But I'm looking for any angle in. I think it's such a broken system. Yeah. And it's a tired narrative that has a million excuses to explain it away now. So we need like a different objective entry point that can actually get some new information. And I will say like of all the experts I've talked to, and I mean scientists and, you know,

credentialed people who are real PhDs or military officials, they all kind of said the same thing. when it comes down to what are these things, right? What could explain all this stuff? And it's going to sound a little trippy, like I just did a hit an acid or something. I didn't. It comes down to reality, which, okay, what do you mean, right? Well, I mean, there's some truth to the fact that the way you're perceiving reality right now is already different than the way I'm perceiving it.

That's just factually true. Right. But what if there was some sort of manipulation of reality? and that's how you get from point A to point B. That's how when someone describes seeing something, it was there, then it was just gone. It wasn't like it took off really fast. It was there, then it wasn't there.

Or dipped in, dipped out. And I don't know, if you want to talk about military intelligence or like one of the more scary weapon ideas in the world, manipulating reality on some inception shit would be probably one of the most dangerous things out there. Yeah. Right? And it sounds impossible or science fiction.

And you know, maybe it is currently to us. Right. But how many millions of years is something else potentially more advanced than us? Where were we a million years ago? I don't even know what was a million years ago. Right. It wasn't like this. No.

We were hot and sweaty and we had bad breath. Gathering. Yes. Yeah. Life expectancy was super short. Right. Right. We lived till we were 12. Right.

Pain, Lindsay, this is such fascinating stuff. Listener, go just put in anywhere you get podcast. Pain Lindsay, all of his shit is so good. Google that shit. The UFO stuff is fascinating. I don't listen to podcasts very often, but I always listen to pains because it's like a respite from all of the Trump fuckery, obviously. Payne, thank you so much for joining me.

I know. Okay. All right. Bye.