Vice President JD Vance reaffirmed his belief that aliens may be either demons or angels during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience on July 15, 2026.
In the wide-ranging interview, Vance and Rogan discussed the recent UFC event on the White House lawn, the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, foreign policy, the release of the Epstein files and the nature of aliens.
Vance said he did not believe the Government had been hiding the remains of an extraterrestrial, as some conspiracy theorists have claimed, but was asked by Rogan to expand on his previous comments characterising aliens as demonic.
“You said something that I thought was very odd,” said Rogan. “You said that you thought that they were demons.”
Vance stood by this view, noting that, across world religions throughout history, there have been reports of “extra-dimensional” beings of a supernatural nature.
“There are supernatural things that are happening,” said Vance.
The vice president clarified that “just because I believe in the supernatural doesn’t mean I believe in everything supernatural”, but added: “If we're talking about an extraterrestrial being that is human-like, but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there's a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.”
Rogan pushed back, noting that many stories of alleged alien abductions or UFO encounters do not involve torture. Vance conceded that the concept of “extra powerful beings, in this case communicating telepathically, helping people” sounded more like angels.
For most of history, Vance said, people would have understood the presence of a “supernatural, hyper-powerful, hyper-knowledable” being as an angelic or demonic figure.
Vance agreed, however, that there could be both extraterrestrial life and angels and demons.
“I guess what I'm saying is it's a distinction that is conceptually interesting to me, but if a space alien with like superhuman technology comes to the Earth and has malicious intent, I don't know how I'm supposed to tell the difference between that and a demon.”
The Vatican has no definitive doctrinal teaching on whether extraterrestrial life exists, though senior Church figures have acknowledged that it is a possibility.
Former Vatican chief astronomer Fr José Funes SJ, who led the Vatican Observatory from 2006 to 2015, once said that if extraterrestrial life were found to exist, “This is not in contrast with the faith, because we cannot place limits on the creative freedom of God.”
“To use St Francis’ words, if we consider earthly creatures as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, why can’t we also speak of an ‘extraterrestrial brother’?” he said.
The characterisation of aliens as demonic has become a source of controversy in recent months.
In June, Fr Stephen Rossetti, the former chief exorcist of the Archdiocese of Washington, was removed from that role after claiming in a now-deleted video posted on social media on May 29: “It’s my personal belief that probably many if not most of these UFO sightings are in fact demons.”
Speaking to reporters, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said that while Rossetti's comments about UFOs and aliens were not the sole, or main, reason for his removal, they “gravely undermined the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons, and exorcism”.
