Barack Obama has clarified a recent interview in which he said aliens are “real,” insisting he saw “no evidence” that extraterrestrials have made contact with us while he was U.S. President.
Obama set the internet alight over the weekend when he told American podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen that aliens are “real but I haven’t seen them” during a quickfire “lightning” round of questions.
“They’re not being kept in Area 51,” he continued. “There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States. Obama then admitted his first question after becoming President of the United States of America on November 4, 2008, was where are the aliens?
Now, Obama has issued a clarifying statement on Instagram, insisting he issued the comment with “the spirit of the speed round” of questions. He then expanded on his prior thoughts.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” he said.
“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 extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
This isn’t the first time Obama has spoken about aliens, of course. In 2021 he told late night TV host James Corden that once he became President, he asked whether there was a lab “where we’re keeping the alien specimens and space ship.” “They did a little bit of research and the answer was no,” he added. However, Obama acknowleged footage and records of objects in the skies “that we don’t know exactly what they are.”
In 2023, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report detailing official sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Many of the phenomena continue to defy explanation, and were described as exhibiting “unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.” According to the report, UAP reporting was “increasing,” which is “enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and an increased opportunity to resolve UAP events.” As of August 2022 there had been 510 UAP reports.
The Pentagon’s public attitude toward sightings of UFOs — now rebranded as UAPs — has shifted dramatically in recent years. Notably, in April 2020, the government made a surprise move to declassify three videos captured by instruments aboard U.S. Navy aircraft, which, having previously been leaked to the public in 2017, depicted encounters with fast-moving unknown objects.
After the report was published, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pledged that the agency would not conceal the existence of aliens, if they were discovered to be the cause of any UAP it is working to investigate.
Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
