Ross Coulthart — Reality Check Q&A: Skywatcher rumors, Marsupial, “Disclosure Day” trailer (21 Dec 2025)
Source: NewsNation, “Reality Check” viewer Q&A with Ross Coulthart, co-hosted by Meagan (producer reading viewer questions). Title: “Ross Coulthart Q&A: Skywatcher rumors & ‘Disclosure Day’.” URL: https://youtu.be/FANHrbEiMAM (2025-12-21; ~39:44; ~266k views). Captured: 2026-07-01. OpenAI Whisper (whisper-1) via scripts/speech_to_text_remote.py. Two voices (Coulthart answers; the co-host reads viewer questions); merged into timestamped paragraphs, verbatim. Contains a mid-show ExpressVPN ad read (~5:34-7:00), left in for fidelity. Provenance only. What this is: a year-end viewer Q&A. Base-relevant items:
- Skywatcher update (the load-bearing item). Asked why Skywatcher has gone silent (Jake Barber’s early promise of results within 6-12 months unmet; the Skywatcher X page dormant since August, Barber’s last post October), Coulthart says he is “told officially that Skywatcher’s moved beyond the field investigation phase and that they’re now doing data analysis, which… was a surprise to some of the people I was talking to inside Skywatcher.” He ties the slowdown to James Fowler having “left working with Skywatcher” — Fowler “provided a lot of the technical equipment that allowed for the monitoring and videoing… and the attraction using the so-called dog whistle” — and adds “I’m aware of a few things… about Skywatcher that I can’t talk about.” This corroborates and extends the Fowler-departure thread in fowler-reed-summers-emergent-dogwhistle-part1-2026-01-27 and the Skywatcher page.
- “Marsupial.” On Matthew Brown’s (Immaculate Constellation) June-2026 “son of Amram-Illan” post to Elon Musk alleging a codename “Marsupial” run by the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) to track “structured light energy craft,” and that Musk was briefed and told the tech was “unknown” (Brown says falsely). Coulthart relays Knapp/Corbell’s speculation tying “Marsupial” to orb-UAPs that release subsidiary orbs (the Yemen Hellfire-orb footage carried a “marsupial” label; possible links to Aguadilla 2013). He flags there is “no public admission… but neither would there be.”
- Jay Stratton / Travis Taylor / Radiance Technologies. On the claim (attributed to Elizondo’s lawyer) that Radiance is involved in acquiring NHI materials and in blocking the Schumer UAP bill via an Ohio (Wright-Patterson-district) senator: Coulthart says he believes neither Stratton nor Taylor still works for Radiance; that there was speculation Radiance would be “gifted” the Lockheed-held object after Bigelow “became too publicly known,” but that the transfer “was blocked,” after which staying would be pointless. Notes Stratton has a book coming (Jan/Feb 2026).
- “Disclosure Day” (Spielberg) trailer. Reacts to the Emily-Blunt “clicks”/hybrid imagery; recounts the CIA-Hollywood acclimatization thesis (the “Chase Brandon” CIA-Hollywood liaison; Bryce Zabel’s “Dark Skies” being approached by Navy Intelligence offering to make the fiction “closer to the truth”); notes ET’s head resembling the Nazca/Peru “reptilian” mummy, and the Reagan White House screening of Close Encounters. Worries the film may push an “aliens as imminent threat” narrative.
- 2026 outlook. “Everything hangs on one man, Donald Trump” — transactional, “what’s in it for him”; Coulthart argues an amnesty will likely be needed despite alleged “cheating, lying, murdering” to conceal the legacy retrieval/reverse-engineering program; says NHI are “pushing that timescale”; cites Puthoff’s account that a decision was made in the last Bush White House not to reveal; notes a reported Burchett/Burlison-Rubio meeting that week.
- Also: metallic spheres (Patrick Jackson’s radiation-avoidance/benevolence hypothesis), the 1997 “alien interview” (discounted via Rick Doty provenance), plus theology and media-decline digressions. Weight as Coulthart’s relayed, sourced-but-unverified reporting and opinion; the Skywatcher-status and Fowler-departure points are the checkable-in-principle, base-relevant core.
[0:00] G’day and welcome to Reality Check Q&A, that time of the week where you get to ask me, Ross Coulthard, the hard questions. And here to grill me, Megan Medic. G’day Megan, how are you? Merry Christmas. Ross, I’m awesome. Oh, Merry Christmas to you as well, my friend. Any big plans? It’s going to be a very nice, quiet beach holiday in Sydney. Frankly, lying in a beach house by the sea. That’s all I want to do. So fire away, Megan.
[0:35] What are the hard questions this week? Well, Ross, before we let you have a beautiful holiday, we need to ask you about the Disclosure Day trailer. We talked about it last week on the Q&A and now we’ve seen some of it. So what are your thoughts? Look it’s intriguing. It’s got Emily Blunt suddenly not capable of speaking and uttering what sound like clicks. Is she a hybrid? What’s it trying to suggest? Frankly, it’s anyone’s guess, but it’s intriguing. The idea, you know, there’s an amazing sequence where you’ve got deer looking in through a window. I’d be guessing, frankly, what any of this means. I would dearly love to sit Steven Spielberg down and give him a grilling and find out what’s coming. I hope, I guess part of me hopes that it’s not presenting the standard aliens as imminent threat narrative, which worries me a little bit. You know, there’s a sort of a narrative of threat and spookiness running through the whole show. Maybe we’re prejudging if we believe that it’s essentially pushing a threat narrative. But yeah, I mean, I think it’s exciting to see any mainstream movie director looking at the issue of disclosure. And I sincerely hope it pushes the narrative further towards encouraging President Trump to be more open. And Ross, I just want to ask you this. I don’t have a viewer question on it, but I do see a lot of people asking, saying this on X. They don’t understand the big deal. They’re saying it’s a movie trailer. Can you kind of go into the background on Steven Spielberg and the CIA and some of his other movies and why this might be actual disclosure? OK, so there’s a fair talk in commentary about the UAP subject that Hollywood is often used to seed ideas, to acclimatize the public to ideas about UAPs. And the reason we know about this is because there was a guy who went by the pseudonym Chase Brandon from memory, who was a CIA liaison with Hollywood, who openly talked about the fact that his job was to essentially portray the presentation of UAPs, the phenomena of UFOs in movies in a particular way that fitted the narrative the U.S. government wanted pushed. My former Need to Know podcast colleague Bryce Zabel had an experience with his co-producer on his Dark Skies series, where people from Navy Intelligence approached them both and essentially offered to craft the narrative to help them shape a more accurate representation of how aliens should be presented. And when they pointed out that, in fact, this was a fictional program, a series that had been crafted from their imagination, the people from Navy Intelligence told them that they could help them air something that was actually closer to the truth, which essentially is an implicit acknowledgement that there are people in the defense and intelligence community that know a lot more than they’re letting on. And they’re using Hollywood as a way of acclimatizing the public. And so that’s the suspicion with Steven Spielberg.
[3:51] Spielberg obviously made E.T., the extraterrestrial, and Close Encounters. I find it intriguing that E.T., the extraterrestrial, has a head very similar to this one, which is the being, this is the head from one of the beings, a three-dimensional copy that we saw in Peru, one of these weird, I don’t know what they are, reptilian creatures that seem to have been preserved with some kind of dust in a cave in the Nazca Desert, bears an uncanny resemblance to the object that we would describe as E.T. in the movie. And then the movie Close Encounters obviously had a very heavy influence from J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée. I don’t doubt for a moment that the military, the intelligence community, use Hollywood as a way of projecting an idea, of acclimatizing the public.
[4:47] And I guess that’s the suspicion that people have with Steven Spielberg. Is he being used? Has he been fed? Because Close Encounters particularly was an extremely well-informed film. A lot of the ideas in Close Encounters endure today in a lot of the witness accounts and experiencer accounts. And it may have just been damn good research on Spielberg’s part, but as I mentioned in the last Q&A, there was a time when Close Encounters was shown in the White House under Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan acknowledged that Spielberg knew a little bit more than most people in the room about the phenomenon. And there’s been a long question mark as to whether Steven Spielberg might have been briefed or read into aspects of The Secret.
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[6:31] Because they’ve got super encryption. It would take a hacker a billion years to get into your data. I would suggest you get your online data today secured by visiting expressvpn.com slash Ross. That’s e-x-p-r-e-s-s vpn.com slash Ross. And if you do this quickly enough, you can get four months extra. Expressvpn.com slash Ross. And Ross, I’ll just say going online without ExpressVPN is like driving a car without a seatbelt. Absolutely. All right, we have a viewer question from Austin on X. Has he reached out to Steven Spielberg to hear his insights on the matter?
[7:18] Seems like someone who you could get connected to for a conversation. Believe me, if I can get Steven Spielberg onto Reality Check, we will be there with bells on. I’m very excited because we do have phone numbers for Steven Spielberg, direct phone numbers I’m assured that we’ve procured from a very sensitive source. And yes, we will be reaching out to Steven Spielberg. We’ve tried him before, of course, no avail. I can imagine that at some stage they’re going to start opening up the publicity for their film Disclosure Day. And look, maybe, maybe he might be more willing to be more open. I certainly will be trying. All right, we will move on to metallic spheres.
[8:02] This is from Just The Dab on X. Hi Megan and Ross, regarding these metallic spheres investigated by the likes of Patrick Jackson and Dr. Villareal, do you think that the phenomenon behind these spheres know that we’re aware of them and that we’re investigating? Could this result into them becoming more stealthy? Oh, that’s a good theory. Certainly from what Patrick Jackson hypothesizes, the spheres go to great efforts to avoid exposing humans to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation. It’s part of Patrick’s theory that when they transmit from the homes or the buildings that they locate themselves in on this planet, they try and find the more remote part of the house. And they’re at pains sometimes to ensure that they don’t hurt humans. So yes, they seem to be capable of being programmed as presumably some kind of autonomous object to avoid humans, but not because they’re trying to hide themselves from us necessarily.
[9:03] They don’t seem to be doing a very good job of that. They don’t seem to be worried about being seen, but to stop us from being hurt, which I guess indicates a degree of benevolence. But frankly, anything I’m saying would be speculative. We just don’t know. It’s a hypothesis that Patrick offers. And I was very happy to give him a good run on the show in our most recent podcast, Reality Check Show. And we’ve had an enormous response to it. I think people are genuinely interested in something that offers a hypothesis about these weird metallic spheres. They are stealthy. They do try to avoid contact with humans. But the motivations for that, I suspect, are more to do with the possibility of exposing humans to ionizing radiation rather than trying to hide themselves from us.
[9:50] Because frankly, the spheres, whatever they are, are they part of the orb phenomenon? I certainly don’t see any lessening in the orb phenomenon all around the world at the moment. There seems to be an increase, if anything, in the frequency of the display of orbs and metallic spheres. Going by the volume of calls and messages that I’m getting, people are reporting this phenomenon all over the world. And by the way, the drones, so-called, haven’t gone away.
[10:20] And I’m not buying into the explanation that’s currently being offered that it’s Russians. Yes, a bunch of students have suggested in Europe that there is a pattern that suggests that there are Russian vessels close by, that we’re around at the time behaving suspiciously when the drones are operating over civilian and military airspace in ways that are very concerning to European authorities. But nobody has proved yet that it’s been capable of tracking those drones, bringing down those drones. We don’t even know if they’re drones. Are they orbs? We don’t know what they are. And I think there needs to be more honesty about what it is we’re dealing with.
[11:01] There is a phenomenon that no one can explain. And we now have that officially from various European governments, and indeed from the American government. They’ve had these weird objects, possibly orbs, possibly drones, over sensitive airspace for years now, and we still have no explanation. Could it be that they’re part of what Patrick Jackson hypothesizes is some kind of non-human network? And why is that not a plausible explanation when, frankly, there is no explanation, there’s no data, there’s no proof to substantiate in any way that it’s Russians? If it is dastardly Russkies, let’s see the evidence. Okay, we have another question from Better Future on X.
[11:46] Has Ross looked into the information about Elon Musk being read into Marsupial? Secondly, could Marsupial be the same program that Grush was on and wanted to write an op-ed about tracking UAPs? Why is Musk silent? Okay, I think this is a reference to Matthew Brown, who was a whistleblower who came forward and actually testified in Congress earlier this year, commendably having the courage to put his head up and speak honestly about what he described as a project name called Immaculate Constellation. But more recently, I think in about June this year, under his Twitter handle, son of Abramillan, Abramillan, I think it is, not Abraham, Abramillan. He basically talked about a different codename, a codename Marsupial.
[12:41] And I’ve got this in front of me because I printed it out beforehand because I was intrigued. In the post, he wrote to Elon Musk, remember when you were briefed by the special executive staff of President Trump, real Donald Trump, on Marsupial. Pretty nifty how at NGA underscore GEOINT is able to keep track of all those non-structured light energy craft flying around the world. Go at Cardinals. Why would you say go at Cardinals? Is it just me or is the fact that there’s a mention of Cardinal there relevant to what we were just talking about with Steven Spielberg? Anyway, moving on.
[13:23] But they were lying to you when they said, we don’t know how they work. So Brown seems to be alleging, Matthew Brown seems to be alleging that Marsupial is a program involving the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the NGA, for tracking structured light energy craft, a term he uses for anomalous phenomena, luminous plasma-like UAPs without solid structure. And he further claims that Musk was briefed about it during the Trump administration and that officials falsely stated the technology behind these craft is unknown.
[14:04] Now, either Matthew’s very well informed or he’s speculative. We just don’t know. There’s been subsequent online discussions around this issue in the UFO UAP community. George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell, our friends from the Weaponized podcast, have speculated that marsupial relates to predictive tracking, containment, or classification of orb-like UAPs that deploy smaller objects analogous to a marsupial’s pouch, hence the marsupial name. For example, in September this year, Jeremy Corbell discussed a marsupial label attached to briefing materials for the Yemen Hellfire Orb UAP footage that was shown in a congressional hearing, describing it as a type that releases subsidiary orbs. And indeed, if you have a look at that imagery, when it’s hit, there are subsidiary orbs that come out and track with the object after it’s hit by the Hellfire missile. And there are also some interpretations online that suggest it might be linked to the Aguadilla 2013 Puerto Rico orb or the Tehran incidents involving similar light energy phenomena. I have to say, there is no public admission, of course, of marsupial as a real secret codename, but neither would there be. If it was a codename, it would be kept secret. So if there’s anybody out there who wants to tell me the real story about marsupial, we’d be very keen to know. Thank you. Okay, Ross, I’ve got a two part question here. We’ve got Ed. Hi, Megan. Ed, down in New Zealand here.
[15:50] Can you please ask Ross if he knows anything about what’s happening with Skywatcher? Initially, Jake was quite adamant we would be seeing a lot within the first six to 12 months, but it seems as though all has gone quiet on that front. And then moments ago, I was on X and I just had Ian post to me. He’s saying, I was following Jake Barber and maybe it’s me, but I can’t find him on Twitter now. And I just also noticed the Skywatcher Twitter page has no posts or updates.
[16:15] Is there anything going on? What are they up to? Or any reason behind things going eerily silent? And I said, I was going to ask you, and then Ian responded to me and said, I found Jake. His last post was a repost in October. Skywatcher’s page last post was August. The momentum has stopped dead. Feels strange, question mark. It does feel strange. And I don’t know what’s going on. I’m told officially that Skywatchers moved beyond the field investigation phase and that they’re now doing data analysis, which I have to say was a surprise to some of the people I was talking to inside Skywatcher.
[16:52] They thought that the field studies were going to be continuing. It may have something to do with the fact that James Fowler has left working with Skywatcher and he provided a lot of the technical equipment that allowed for the monitoring and videoing of phenomena, including the detection and tracking, and obviously the attraction using the so-called dog whistle. I would be speculating. I haven’t spoken to Jake recently. I will reach out to him. I’ll ask him what’s going on.
[17:21] I’m aware of a few things that have been going on about Skywatcher that I can’t talk about. I wish I could talk more fully. But basically, last time we heard from them, the official explanation was that they were at the data analysis stage. And yes, I think we’re long overdue for an update. Okay. We have a question coming in from Carmen. Hello, Ross. Thank you for your hard work to inform us on the most important topics.
[17:51] I am confused about Jay Stratton’s role in the disclosure movement. He is one of the most important whistleblowers about the legacy program, yet he reportedly works for Radiance Technologies along Dr. Travis Taylor. Lou Elizondo’s lawyer made comments in an interview that will imply that Radiance Technologies is involved in the acquisition of NHI materials and in the blocking of the Chuck Schumer UAP bill through the influence of an Ohio senator from Patterson-based district. Do you have any thoughts on this entanglement of disclosure figures with diverse interests and each other? Thank you, Carmen. Carmen, I’m happy to be proved wrong. But I’m pretty sure that Jay Stratton, the former head of the UAP task force inside the Pentagon and Travis Taylor, who also worked obviously with the NIDS team, with Robert Bigelow and on the ORSAP investigations into anomalous phenomena and is also very much prominent in the Skinwalker Ranch series. I don’t think either man is working anymore for Radiance Technologies.
[18:52] And look, I don’t know for sure. Jay’s publishing a book, I think it’s coming out in January, February next year, and I’m looking forward to it very much. We will, of course, be trying to get him on Reality Check. And Jay, there’s an open invitation here. Jay is very cautious and very guarded for good reason, because he’s constrained by national security constraints, the same kind of NDAs that everyone operates on if they’ve operated within the secret world. But I’m pretty sure that the explanation for Radiance, the way it’s been told to me, is Jay and Travis did go and work for Radiance. There was speculation that Radiance was going to be gifted technology, UAP technology as part of that arrangement. And nobody’s said this officially.
[19:43] Jay hasn’t said this to me, neither has Travis. But essentially, there’s been a lot of speculation that the object that at one stage Lockheed Martin was going to pass over to Bigelow, that there was a change of strategy, change of plan, because Bigelow became too publicly known, and that the transition was going to be happening, the handover was going to be happening to Radiance. And I can imagine Radiance wanting to get their hands on that kind of technology would see huge advantage in having the head of the UAP task force, immediate past UAP TF boss, Jay Stratton on board, and Travis Taylor, who’s a scientist with great renown in the subject and study of UAPs. But I guess if they didn’t get the object, if the transition of that object, the passing over of that object was blocked for some reason, which I understand it was, then I guess there’d be no point in them staying working there. All I know is that then neither of them are working, I’m told, for Radiance technologies, and they haven’t done for quite a while. Okay, here is an email from Damon.
[20:53] Hey, Ross and Megan, I am wondering what your thoughts are on the 1997 alien interview. About a year ago, it resurfaced and it caught my attention because of Jon Stewart’s claim that the video is real, and how we did his own investigation to identify and contact some of the individuals to validate that the video is true. Thanks. Look, I honestly don’t have any data points to suggest that the video is authentic or not authentic. I just don’t know. What worries me a little bit about Jon is he places a lot of faith in Rick Doty, who is an acknowledged disinformation psyops operative that worked with Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I’m sure Rick’s a nice human being. I’ve not engaged with him, but basically, this is somebody who admits that he’s deceived people and used UFOs as a way of misleading the public. So I wouldn’t use him as an information source.
[21:51] And so I’m told that Doty is part of the source for the provenance of the alien interview. And for that reason, I think we have to treat it with extreme skepticism. I’m certainly interested in the alien interview, and it’s been around for a long while. But whether it’s authentic or not, I just don’t know. OK, we have an email from David. Hi, Megan and Ross. Why should only humans have a soul and still exist after death? Surely other mammals and perhaps even other creatures on Earth would be no different to us humans in this regard. Keep up the great work. Oh, that’s interesting.
[22:29] And that’s a really interesting question. Yeah, it’s interesting. One of the things I’ve noticed in my very limited studies of different religions is that the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they endow animals with a kind of a soul, but it’s not as big as the human soul. Whereas in Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., they strongly affirm that animals have souls and that they even reincarnate. Obviously, the idea of souls is still speculative. I personally increasingly come around to the idea that if consciousness is non-local, as quantum physics and certain scientists are increasingly suggesting, it means that our consciousness, our sense of ourselves as human beings, may very well survive physical death and that we are part of a unitary consciousness. In fact, there is the possibility that free will may be a myth, complete myth, and that we are just part of one big uber consciousness. So within that idea, yeah, I mean, Christianity does hold that animals have souls, but they are different kinds of souls from human souls. I don’t purport to be a theologist, but in Judaism, I’ve read that animals have a life force, a nefesh, or an animal soul for instincts or emotions, but they lack the divine higher spiritual soul. All of this, of course, is speculative, and frankly, I have no idea. But if it means that we’ll get to see our beautiful little doggies that have passed on in heaven or the afterlife realm, I’d be quite happy about that. Thanks very much.
[24:22] Ross, you have a doggie, right? You have some kind of golden thing? You call them a golden doodle in America, which makes Australians laugh, because in Australia, a doodle is a penis. So we always think it’s hilarious that Americans call their dogs golden doodles. We call them Groodles in Australia. And Bonnie Groodle, my wife would laugh at me if I claimed to be a close friend of Bonnie. I’ve been deeply skeptical about dogs in the house, but because I’m outnumbered by the women in my family, basically, we have a Groodle who we all love, and her name is Bonnie, and she’s a beautiful dog. And I suspect she has a very wise soul.
[25:05] Well, you opened the door for me to make a good joke there, but I’m not going to do it. Nice try. All right. Here comes Pat. Thank you for having this platform where the common person can ask questions. My question is, where does the general public report anomalous experiences or find out information on them if they are not UAPs? I thought I’d ask you, since you’ve heard it all. Well, you can talk to us.
[25:30] I’m certainly interested in hearing from people who report anomalous experiences. MUFON is probably the preeminent organization internationally to receive UFO reports. One of the problems here in Australia is we don’t have any centralized body anymore to gather UFO reports. Our military, our Air Force, used to actually collect anomalous phenomena reports, and they don’t do that anymore since the late 1970s.
[25:55] But yeah, MUFON, M-U-F-O-N, is the organization I would most recommend. One of the criticisms of MUFON, and look, it’s probably unfair just because of the volume of information they get, is that they collect, they receive an enormous amount of information, but they don’t do enough analysis. It’s largely voluntary, MUFON. It’s basically run on the goodwill of a lot of people who work as MUFON investigators.
[26:21] And frankly, I know a few of them. I know people here in Australia who work for MUFON, and they have other jobs, and they just do it as a passionate thing that they do out of interest. I would recommend MUFON, frankly. Okay. We have a post on X from Blake. Ross, love your work on UFOs, but have you ever considered covering more mainstream topics back in Australia? Our country is going through so much, and you might be the only journalist with the balls to address some of what is going on. Look, I’ve happily moved on from Australian media. I think that, sadly, free-to-air television, where I’ve spent a large part of my career, and newspapers.
[27:03] I kind of joke that every time I go and work for a media organization, it starts dying. I worked in newspapers in the era of hot lead, where literally you had to typeset using lead, melted lead for the newspaper. I worked in radio with Nagra tape recorders, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and of course, they’ve become obsolete. I’ve worked in television with literally 16 mil film, and again, audio, separate audio that you had to sync using a clapper. All of these great ways of telling stories are slowly dying, and that’s because what’s happening is the younger generation, in particular, are gravitating online. Sadly, I think that the free-to-air networks in Australia, just like the free-to-air networks in America, are slowly dying. They’re becoming almost irrelevant, because I don’t know any young people that engage with the news. My kids think it’s hilarious that my wife and I sit down and watch the 6 p.m. news at night on television, on free-to-air TV, when you can literally watch online any news, anywhere, anytime, by using any of the apps. It’s a tradition that, frankly, is dying out, and I think we have to acknowledge that, which is why I don’t want to sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet. It’s why we’re really proud of what we’re achieving on Reality Check, because there is a change happening in the way that people consume news.
[28:30] I was really struck when the Sydney Bondi attack happened on the weekend. I went to all of the mainstream news bulletins, and frankly, I wasn’t getting any new information that was any use at all, other than that there seemed to be some kind of an attack happening, and this was the case for at least an hour or two hours. Because I was really worried about where my kids were, and after I’d rung them and made sure they were safe, I went on Twitter, and I was really struck by how quickly I was able to inform myself on Twitter, because people were posting videos on Twitter and TikTok and Instagram, reporting literally from the scene, and so it was quite chilling to see on social media people in the Jewish community who were squatting in that terrible melee, literally hearing the rifle shots going off in the background and knowing that I was looking at video that, frankly, wasn’t available on mainstream media, and I haven’t actually seen it yet on mainstream media. So what’s happening, I think, is we have a much more rigorous way of deriving news, new information through online, and that’s what we try and do for you with Reality Check and here at NewsNation as well. We’re slowly moving a lot more of our product online because we recognize that people like to consume through their online portals, and I think we have to move with the times and accept that Google, Amazon, Facebook, all of these organizations that made a fortune out of moving online are slowly gobbling up all the revenue from the big mainstream media organizations, and there’s no longer the funding to do the kind of investigative journalism that I like doing. In the good old days of 60 Minutes in Australia or any of the current affairs programs, public affairs shows that I’ve worked on in Australia, you would be left alone for weeks, sometimes months at a time, and told to go off and investigate something, and none of my friends that work in free-to-air television have that freedom anymore. There’s just no money, and that’s why there is a debate happening here that essentially as we move online, a lot of these big organizations like Google, Facebook, they’re making a fortune out of the public using online portals, but are they giving enough back? Do we want to find a way of ensuring that the public get the news that they want, and should they be protecting journalism? I’m not a big fan of retroactively trying to protect journalism because I think a lot of journalism is lazy and bland, and it just needs to wake up and go with the times, but I do agree. I mean, there are a lot of stories that aren’t being covered in Australia that should be being covered, just like they’re not being covered in the U.S., and I think increasingly you’re going to see that moving online, and that’s a transition that I think is inevitable. Okay, one more question to close out the Q&As of 2025. This is from UAPtreonX.
[31:39] What is Ross’s outlook of 2026? Is he hopeful of what the coming year may bring? Anything to look forward to? Okay, here’s my take. Everything hangs on one man, Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s a transactional person. He’ll be asking the question, now that he’s been briefed, and I’m sure he has been, about NHI, what’s in it for him? What benefit is derived for him to be the person who comes forward and tells the public the truth? We don’t know the whole story.
[32:14] Frankly, a lot of what we report still has to be speculative. I’m very influenced by the fact that good people like David Grush and others have talked about agreements, and there’s a question mark in my mind. Is there some kind of agreement that constrains government from revealing what it knows about the phenomenon? I don’t accept that it’s a slippery slope to reveal the existence of an NHI engaging with this planet and to stop there. I think the public have the right to know that. I do think, and I’ve said this many times so it won’t come as a surprise to our audience, there may be good reasons for why weapons systems, incredible technological breakthroughs may need to be protected so that our potential foreign adversary rivals don’t secure an advantage by stealing them from us. We live in the free world still, just, and we’re teetering on the edge of incredibly dangerous times geopolitically. I can understand why there may be a view in government that it’s necessary to protect the secrecy of certain technologies, but if I was Donald Trump, 2026 represents a moment for greatness. It represents a moment where he could be the person who does definitively reveal the existence of the deep state. And sadly, I think it’s going to require an amnesty as much as it galls me when I think of the crimes that have allegedly been committed to conceal this whole legacy UAP retrieval and reverse engineering program, the cheating, the lying, the murdering, the threats. There’s been generations of people bullied, intimidated, and in some cases killed to hide the secret. I actually think we need an amnesty. I think the big decision that the president has to make is what’s in it for him, what’s in it for his administration to tell the American people, we are not alone. I can’t predict what Donald Trump is going to do, but what I am aware of is a lot of people are telling me that the NHI are pushing that timescale. They’re demanding, pushing a disclosure.
[34:36] And I suspect that has a lot to do with what we’ve been seeing in our skies. There is an increased frequency of anomalous phenomena in our skies, whether the skeptics want to admit it or not. We are seeing huge numbers of orbs, supposed drones, which I refuse to call drones, appearing over sensitive military and civilian facilities. And I’ve had numerous people say to me from within defense and intelligence that they have no explanation for what these objects are or where they come from. Here we are.
[35:08] It’s well over a year on from when there was the last drone flap over New Jersey. But don’t forget that these so-called drone flaps have been happening for years, in fact going right back to the 1980s with the Belgian UFO flap. There’s been anomalous objects showing themselves over sensitive military and civilian airspace for a very, very long time, and that’s intensifying. So I suspect the NHI are turning up the heat. And I suspect that the Pentagon, the intelligence community, the people in private aerospace that are sitting on this secret and trying to keep it for themselves, they know they’re on a limited timescale. So I just implore them. I implore President Trump to make a decision, to reach a conclusion about what he should do. I appreciate that the decision was made during the period of the last Bush White House, according to Hal Puthoff, not to reveal what is known about UAPs, begs the question, what is it that they know that means that we can’t be told about it? But surely things have moved on 30, 40 years on. It’s time we knew.
[36:20] And I think the public is becoming impatient. There’s a wisdom of the crowd here. It’s becoming untenable for the government to maintain the cover up. And I can’t predict how Donald Trump is going to react. I’m heartened by the fact that apparently, as we speak, there may indeed be a meeting taking place between the acting National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, and Congressman Tim Burchett, who’s announced that he’s having, is it Tim Burchett or Burleson, I’ve forgotten which one it is, but one of the congressional representatives is having a meeting with Marco Rubio this week. I hope they do discuss UAPs, frankly, and I hope they get an explanation for why or what the government’s going to do about it.
[37:02] But I think it’s untenable for them to continue the cover up. The public has to know. And at some stage, I think there’s the terrible risk of a catastrophic disclosure. And nothing would engender public distrust and a complete lack of faith in the institutions of government than for the public to realize that they’ve been lied to without sufficient explanation as to why those lies were happening.
[37:26] So it’s much better for government to do this in a controlled way. I worry, frankly, at some of the things I get told by people, because I do think that it would be better for government to control the narrative on this and explain to the public why they’re doing what they’re doing. I like to think the very best of America. It’s been the leader of the free world and an exemplar for democratic ideals and freedoms. Freedom of speech, freedom of association, and those ideals should live on in how they project transparency about the UAP disclosure issue. So I can’t give you a prediction about what I think is going to happen in 2026, but I certainly think there’s going to be increasing pressure on the Trump administration and on key figures in that administration to be more open with the public. And I don’t think there’s going to be any lessening in the witnesses that are coming forward. I’m talking to people who are seriously considering sticking their heads up, and I know others are as well. And it’s not going to go away. So Mr. Trump, the ball is in your court, sir. OK, Russell, with that, I wish you a happy New Year. And happy Christmas and happy New Year to you as well, Megan. I’m very much looking forward to a restful Christmas break.
[38:45] I hope you have a nice, chilly, snowy Christmas. I’m going to go and lie by the beach not too far from Bondi and sun myself in Sydney sunshine. All right, sounds good. Well, if you have a question for Reality Check, you can email us realitycheckatnewsnationnow.com. We will continue doing the Q&As in the new year. And Ross, where can people listen to you? You can always, because too much Reality Check is barely enough. You can always listen to us as you lie by the beach or play in the snow on Spotify or Audible or all the great podcast apps. You’ll find Reality Check there and you can download and listen for your listening pleasure. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all.