Former President Barack Obama clarified a comment he made during an interview in which he stated aliens are “real,” explaining that because the “universe is so vast,” the odds are very “good there’s life out there.”
In a post on Instagram, the former president shared a video from his interview with YouTuber Brian Cohen, in which Cohen asked if aliens were real. Obama added that during his term as president, he “saw no evidence” that aliens “have made contact with us.”
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” Obama wrote. “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!” Obama added.
Breitbart News’s Lowell Cauffiel reported that during the interview, while Obama stated that aliens are real and that he had not “seen them,” he also stated aliens were “not being kept” at Area 51:
“Uh, they’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” the former president responded.
He then quickly addressed speculation around Nevada’s Area 51, a secretive military test site that has long been claimed to contain downed extraterrestrials and their aircraft, which are purportedly being reverse-engineered.
“Uh, they’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama explained. “And they’re not being kept in uh what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
Cohen went on to ask Obama what the “first question” he “wanted answered” when he became president was. Obama answered with, “Where are the aliens?”
During a 2021 interview with The Late Late Show host James Corden, Obama stated that “when it comes to aliens, there are some things” he was unable to say on air, the New York Post reported.