'You really believe that?': NewsNation's Leland Vittert fact-checks Mace in real time as she goes '100% deep state' on the UFO files
On July 10, 2026, Rep. Nancy Mace went on NewsNation's 'On Balance' to talk about the Pentagon's latest UFO file release, and host Leland Vittert spent the segment pushing back on her. When Mace claimed 'three-letter agencies' are blocking UAP documents, Vittert pressed: 'Come on, you really believe that?' and asked whether she really believed that over 80 years these agencies 'have managed to keep secrets from everybody, and nobody has ever spoken out.' Mace answered, 'I 100% think the deep state,' and said it hides information 'not only from the American public, but from elected officials.' Earlier she called one released video 'a cluster of balloons,' said 'I'm not an expert in this,' and later conceded she had 'seen no proof' of aliens. Her words and the host's skepticism are reproduced here in full so readers can judge.
On July 10, 2026, Rep. Nancy Mace (@NancyMace), a member of the House Oversight Committee, appeared on NewsNation's "On Balance with Leland Vittert" to discuss the Pentagon's latest batch of released UFO files. What makes the segment worth cataloging is not the footage of unidentified objects. It is the interview itself, because the host spent most of it pushing back on his own guest.
Reporting credit: This dispatch is built on the July 10, 2026 segment of "On Balance," reported and hosted by Leland Vittert for NewsNation. The full interview is embedded below and linked in the sources. Every quote here is verbatim from that broadcast. The characterizations of Mace's claims are Vittert's own, put to her on air; Maceopedia adds none of its own.
Rep. Nancy Mace on NewsNation's "On Balance with Leland Vittert," July 10, 2026. Watch the full segment on YouTube · NewsNation's writeup.
The host wasn't buying it
The turning point comes when Mace tells Vittert she was informed, through the Oversight Committee, "of an individual that says that there are certain three-letter agencies that are blocking documents in the UAP UFO space from this administration." Vittert does not let it pass. What follows is the exchange, in full and in order:
Vittert: "Come on, you really believe that?"
Vittert: "You really believe that the CIA is telling their own director you can't look at something?"
Mace: "It's not just the CIA."
Vittert: "You really believe that, that over 80 years, somehow these three-letter agencies have managed to keep secrets from everybody, and nobody has ever spoken out?"
Mace: "I do, I do. I 100% think the deep state..."
Vittert: "Have you ever known the government to be that good?"
Mace: "Look how long it's taken us to declassify some of this information. I do think that some of the deep state does go about hiding information, not only from the American public, but from elected officials."
That is a sitting member of Congress telling a friendly, center-right host that she "100%" believes a decades-long "deep state" cover-up, and the host openly treating the claim as implausible. Vittert's "Have you ever known the government to be that good?" is the whole segment in one line.
"A cluster of balloons"
The skepticism did not come out of nowhere. Minutes earlier, Mace had undercut the very premise she was there to advance. Praising the release, she said, "the Trump administration is the most transparent administration in American history." Then, describing one of the newly released videos, she offered this:
"One of the videos that came out today looks like a cluster of balloons. You know, so I'm not an expert in this, but it looks like balloons and it's floating with the wind.", Nancy Mace, on the July 10 UFO file release
In the space of one answer she called the government's mysterious footage a bunch of balloons and volunteered that she is "not an expert." Vittert also pressed the national-security logic head on, asking why anyone would "push the government to release something that would give the Chinese an upper hand," whether the objects "are from this planet or any other planet."
"I've seen no proof of that"
Mace repeatedly said there are images she has seen "in a skiff" (a secure facility) "that I can't discuss" and "would really like the American people to see." But when Vittert asked whether those images would prove there are aliens, she conceded the payoff isn't there:
"No, I don't think it would prove that there's aliens. I've seen no proof of that.", Nancy Mace
Pressed on what the point was, then, she fell back on a general principle: "I think the American people have a right to know," while allowing that disclosure should not come "without sacrificing our own national security," the exact caveat Vittert had been pressing on her the entire time.
The exchange, captioned
The back-and-forth is short and it plays for itself. Below is a Maceopedia supercut of the segment's key moments, with the speakers labeled, so the pushback and the answers sit side by side.
Maceopedia supercut of the July 10, 2026 "On Balance" interview. Footage: NewsNation. Watch the full segment.
None of this is sealed, privileged, or in dispute. It is a public television interview, dated and on the record, and it is reproduced here word for word. Readers can judge for themselves how a member of the House Oversight Committee sounded when a sympathetic host asked her to defend what she was saying.
Sources & related coverage
- NewsNation, "On Balance with Leland Vittert" (July 10, 2026), the primary source: full segment on YouTube · NewsNation article, "UFO files: 'Deep state' may be withholding material, Rep. Mace says".
- Background on Mace's long-running UFO/UAP oversight role: Congresswoman Nancy Mace Questions UFO Whistleblower (mace.house.gov).
- Related Maceopedia dispatch on the 2023 UAP hearing where David Grusch testified: Human or non-human biologics.
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