Barack Obama sparked headlines after saying aliens are “real” during a recent interview—before later clarifying his remarks on social media.
Speaking on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast on Saturday, the former US president was asked directly whether aliens exist.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Mr Obama replied.
Obama also addressed a racist video shared by Donald Trump on social media that portrayed him and his wife, Michelle Obama, as apes. While he did not mention Trump by name, he criticized the decline in standards among public officials, saying the “decorum” and “respect for… office” that once guided US leadership had eroded.
Later, taking to Instagram to explain his earlier comments about aliens, the 44th president clarified his stance:
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.
“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extra-terrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
During the podcast, Obama also dismissed popular conspiracy theories about Area 51, the US Air Force base in Nevada.
“There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Mr Obama said.
When asked what his first question was after becoming president, he joked:
“Uh, where are the aliens?”
Obama has previously spoken about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. In a 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, he revealed that he had asked officials whether aliens were being studied in secret labs after taking office, and was told the answer was “no”.
However, he emphasized that unidentified aerial phenomena remain an area of serious investigation.
“There is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he said.
“We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. I think people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
