Dr. Phil McGraw says millions of Americans have been locked out of the federal UFO process while more than 1,800 strange-sighting reports sit untouched by the Pentagon.
The TV host and author made the allegation in a Wednesday video on X, where he said he was “absolutely certain” Washington had spent 80 years misleading the public about mysterious encounters and possible alien life.
McGraw stopped short of saying he could prove UFOs are real. His complaint was aimed instead at civilian accounts that he said never made it into the government’s records release.
He put the number of overlooked public UFO reports at more than 1,800.
The overwhelming majority of UAP sightings come from the public.
The government never investigates them.If 99% prove to be nothing to see here… fine.
What about the 1%? pic.twitter.com/FAPkyvjigA— Dr. Phil (@DrPhil) September 2, 2026
“Can some of those be explained away? I’m sure they can, maybe all of them, I don’t know. The point is nobody in the government is even looking at these things,” he said.
McGraw has already criticized the government’s stream of UFO-related documents, photos and videos, saying the release process has not brought Americans closer to answers about extraterrestrials.
“Most of you are as angry as I am that the government has lied straight to our face. This is what really p***** me off, there is not one government agency that lets everyday Americans report UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena],” McGraw said.
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President Trump in February ordered the US Department of War to handle the declassification and public release of records involving UFOs and alien life.
Five document drops have followed, with material largely coming from the FBI, CIA, NASA and the Pentagon. McGraw argued the files have mostly consisted of murky accounts, irrelevant information or images too unclear to serve as proof.
His latest X video zeroed in on who gets to speak directly to the government about unusual objects or phenomena.
McGraw said 93 percent of Americans do not have an official route to submit UFO sightings to federal officials or the military. That figure equals more than 310 million people, he said.
McGraw said only current and former federal employees, military service members, government contractors and pilots can file those reports directly with the federal government.
“It’s turned a blind eye from most Americans. So, if the government doesn’t want to see it, who does, where is all that information going?” McGraw asked.
“If 99 percent of it proves to be nothing to see here, fine. What about the one percent?” he added.
For ordinary citizens, McGraw pointed to two private organizations collecting UFO accounts outside the government: NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center, and the Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON.
McGraw said NUFORC currently lists 1,855 UFO reports in its “Tier 1” category. Those cases involve sightings that were not easily chalked up to birds, balloons, camera problems or human-made aircraft.
An independent review found those cases from around the country accumulated over decades could only be characterized as possible extraterrestrial spacecraft, McGraw said.
He said those 1,855 cases were likely never examined by the government, leaving them absent from the current public release process.
The UFO attack lands as McGraw’s name has also been pulled back into the Oprah Winfrey orbit, after Winfrey addressed criticism over McGraw and Dr. Mehmet Oz, two television figures she helped introduce to national audiences.
Winfrey told Emmy magazine in an August interview that their politics and views belong to them, not her.
“People criticize me for Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, because of their politics or their views,” Winfrey said.
“Everybody has their own path in life, and it has not one thing to do with me, and I don’t have one thing to do with them,” she added.
Winfrey has supported Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris. McGraw and Oz support Trump and were given Trump administration posts.
Trump named McGraw to his Religious Liberty Commission last May. Oz became administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services one month earlier.
Winfrey’s history with McGraw dates back to a very different chapter of both their careers.
McGraw assisted her during a six-week Texas trial in 1998, after cattlemen sued Winfrey and accused her of defaming the beef industry.
“Dr. Phil, he was so practical, so down to earth, so real,” Winfrey told Emmy.
“And he would ride in the car with me every morning on the way to trial, where I’m literally sitting on trial for six weeks,” she said.
Winfrey said McGraw’s help during the case pushed her to bring him in front of her audience.
“I felt that he was so instrumental in helping me,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, you could help a lot of people. You should come on my show.’”
McGraw became a regular expert presence on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” before Harpo Productions built “Dr. Phil.”
The daytime show debuted in September 2002 as the first spin-off from Winfrey’s program.
Oz first appeared on “Oprah” in 2004 and became one of the show’s most familiar medical voices. Harpo later teamed with Sony on “The Dr. Oz Show,” helping move him from Oprah’s couch to his own syndicated platform.
Winfrey said longtime friend Gayle King introduced her to the heart surgeon.
“Gayle introduced me to Dr. Oz,” Winfrey told Emmy. “He explained practical things like colon cancer and bowel movements.”
“I thought he had the language for explaining medical things in a way that was helpful to me. I thought it would be helpful to many other people.”
Oz later entered Republican politics, running for US Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022 as a conservative Republican after previously describing himself as more moderate.
Trump backed Oz in the GOP primary, which Oz won before losing the general election to Democrat John Fetterman.
Winfrey endorsed Fetterman over Oz days before voters went to the polls.