President Obama has retracted a statement he made on a podcast in which he appeared to claim that aliens are real.
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Published February 16, 2026
Former US President Barack Obama has clarified his comments about the existence of extraterrestrial life on a podcast, after claiming he knew aliens existed.
During a rapid-fire Q&A segment in which he appeared as a guest on left-wing political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen’s show on Saturday, the podcaster asked President Obama whether he believed extraterrestrial life was real.
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“They’re real, but I’ve never seen them,” the 44th president of the United States responded.
“They’re not being kept in Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this huge conspiracy and it’s hidden from the president of the United States,” he continued.
President Obama’s apparent acknowledgment of the existence of aliens was picked up by media around the world and added fuel to the long-standing conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is hiding aliens at Area 51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada.
On Sunday night, President Obama said in an Instagram post that the viral video does not reflect an actual assessment of whether aliens exist due to the speed with which the question was asked.
“Statistically speaking, the universe is so vast that there is a good chance that there is life in it,” he said.
“But the distances between our solar systems are so great that it is unlikely that aliens will ever visit us, and we have seen no evidence that extraterrestrials have made contact with us during my time as president. Really!”
Cohen’s next question for the former U.S. leader during the podcast episode was, “What’s the first question you wanted answered when you became president?”
President Obama laughed and replied, “Where are the aliens? Where are the aliens?”
In 2019, there was an attempt to “raid” Area 51, with 1.5 million people signing up to ambush the once-secret facility. But in the end, only about 150 social media influencers made it to the venue, and the day’s event ended with several arrests before turning into a music festival.
In 2013, declassified documents indicated that the site was used for aviation testing for U.S. government projects including the U-2 and Oxcart air surveillance programs.
During his appearance on Cohen’s podcast, Obama also touched on recent social media posts depicting President Donald Trump and his wife Michelle as monkeys, Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance that Trump supporters protested, and even the 2028 election.
