UFO Debate: Ex-Navy Pilot Criticizes Christie's Response, Demands Seriousness

Despite a career built on frankness, presidential hopeful Chris Christie fell short of Ryan Graves' expectation—responsibility and honesty delivered to the American public.

Christie shrugged off the UFO topic during the Republican primary debate, a move which Graves, a former Navy pilot and founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, found deeply disturbing and disrespectful towards a serious national security matter.

Responding to a UAP question with levity, Christie commented, 'I think it's horrible that because I’m from New Jersey, you asked me about unidentified flying objects and Martians. We're different, but we're not that different.'

Although Christie went on to emphasize his belief in the President's duty to tell the truth to the public, he did not dwell on the UFO issue, thinking threats to children's education highlighted more crucial field.

Countering Christie's light-hearted approach, Graves posed the challenging question, 'When is laughter ever an acceptable response to a national security question?' He firmly believes that the issue of advanced UAPs poses a real and serious national security concern.

Besides gesturing Christie and other candidates to meet Navy pilots who had UAP experiences, Graves urged for transparency and genuine answers, opposing jokes that stifle necessary conversation and perpetuate stigma and underreporting.

Recently, other politicians have been more actively engaging in public discourse about UFOs.

For example, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recognized in July that Americans have a right to learn about 'non-human' intelligences and corresponding technologies of unknown origins.

Similarly, Republican Senator Marco Rubio urged the executive branch’s participation in this issue, acknowledging much is yet to be discovered about UFOs.

He went on to emphasize the need for more transparency, stating this to be another major step towards reducing stigma associated with discussing UFO.

Graves supports this transparency path - he established a campaign to assist commercial aircrew and military UAP witnesses wanting to share experiences.

The campaign aims to establish a website and a safe 'pipeline' for witnesses, furthering the importance of hearing from those with firsthand knowledge.

Keeping secrecy, stigma, and dismissal at bay, Graves and others are thus pushing this significant issue into the promised transparency for the public.