GRUSCH! A-ah! ... Savior of the Universe?

Empty Bleachers

When it comes to UFOs, it feels like the public has been under a full-court press by the powers that be. The DOD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) kicked things off on April 19 with an open hearing to share what they know about unknown things in the sky. Turns out, not much. Unsurprisingly, this snooze-fest elicited very little public interest in “UFOs” according to Google Trends.

Then on May 31, NASA televised its 4-hour long UFO comedy routine with punch lines like: “I wanted to reassure the public that we’re absolutely committed to providing the public transparency and openness. Those are the hallmarks of NASA;” and “I honestly believe that this collective inter-agency approach will lend credibility to the study of UAPs.” Despite their deadpan humor, the round-table failed to garner much of an audience.

After these official efforts flopped, the opposing team ran a hurry-up offense of their own. Disclosure advocate Christopher Mellon’s June 3 Politico article gained a few early yards by reminding readers of the “persistent rumors” about government efforts to recover crashed UFOs. On June 5, The Debrief connected on a deep pass to the red zone with details offered by veteran David Grusch about secret government UFO retrieval programs and the existence of extraterrestrial pilots.

Why is it every time we hear Grusch’s name we want to say “GRUSCH” the same way Queen says “FLASH” in the Flash Gordon theme song?

Google Trends reveals that interest in the term “UFO” spiked after other media outlets picked up The Debrief’s exclusive. Fascination remained high through Grusch’s June 11 interview with NewsNation, stoked in part by a separate salacious story on June 7 concerning 10-ft. tall aliens in a Las Vegas neighborhood.

Finally, on June 12—in an event advertised as far back as May 24—UFO-whisperer Dr. Steven Greer said “hold my beer” and jumped into the fray with an National Press Club appearance. The presentation included testimony from “top secret Government whistleblowers” about military encounters with ETs and their advanced technology. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, Harvard Professor Avi Loeb’s grin grew two inches wider.

This Google Trends graph shows search interest for the term "UFO" from April 18 - June 20, 2023. The numbers peaked when Grusch gave his eye-opening Sunday night interview (6/11/23), but the Las Vegas aliens generated just as much buzz.

The media effectively downplayed Grusch’s Revelations.

The Guardian offered this cringe-worthy headline: “Are aliens that bad at parking?”—rehashing familiar tropes about the improbability of advanced ET technology breaking down on Earth. The tired talking point is parroted by the NY Times who wondered how “inhuman species cross oceans of space or leap interdimensional barriers using unfathomable technology and yet somehow keep crashing and leaving souvenirs behind.”

Forbes fell into a similar lazy trap: “However, if one assumes that alien life is advanced enough to design vehicles capable of prolonged periods of space travel (or inter-dimensional travel), then why are they crashing like drunk teenagers?”

Samesies for National Review: “It strains credulity to suggest that extraterrestrial vehicles capable of traveling light-years to Earth are just falling out of the sky so consistently that the government has numerous teams dedicated to recovering them. One wouldn’t expect advanced extraterrestrial vehicles to have such a tough time staying in the air!”

I guess we’re just supposed to ignore the fact that Earth’s space agencies have been deliberately crashing devices into cosmic objects for decades.

WIRED also lined up against Grusch in their own way, lumping him in with the “far-right” and “fringe-right.” The NY Mag simply labeled his claims as “crazy.”

The real winner in the whole circus was the team that broke the story. The Debrief scooped their counterparts in the press, and their peers were bad at hiding their feelings. The obligatory citations were filled with not-so-subtle digs at The Debrief’s credibility. For example: The Guardian referred to them as “a little known website called the Debrief.”

Vanity Fair joined them in playing up their apparent obscurity: “The Debrief, a little-known website covering the science and defense spaces.”

WaPo avoided using The Debrief’s name directly, instead referring to as a “niche website” that the columnist had ostensibly “never heard of before.”

A magazine called The Atlantic—which says it has been “challenging assumptions and pursuing truths” and describes itself as independent politically—sought to undermine The Debrief by layering qualifiers on top of loaded language: “A website called The Debrief—which says it specializes in ‘frontier science’ and describes itself as self-funded . . .”

As far as Grusch’s statements about a top secret government-run UFO junkyard and his estimation of the ET situation—we think we’ll reserve judgment and await further developments before weighing in.

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