Former US President Barack Obama declared that aliens are real during a weekend podcast interview, while simultaneously dismissing long-standing conspiracy theories about Area 51.
Speaking with political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama responded affirmatively when asked directly whether extraterrestrial life exists, stating: “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them. “
The former president went on to clarify that no aliens are being kept at the highly classified Nevada Air Force base.
“There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he said.
When Cohen asked what question he most wanted answered upon taking office, Obama replied with a laugh: “Where are the aliens?”
Area 51, the secretive military installation in southern Nevada, has been the subject of decades of speculation amongst conspiracy theorists.
Claims have ranged from the alleged storage of crashed alien spacecraft—particularly materials supposedly recovered at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947—to experimentation with time travel and weather control technology.
This is not the first time Obama has addressed public interest in unexplained aerial phenomena.
During a 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, he joked about alien inquiries before adopting a more serious tone.
He confirmed that genuine UAP sightings exist and that the government has documented objects displaying flight patterns that don’t match known aircraft.
Obama’s remarks come amid heightened congressional scrutiny of unidentified aerial phenomena.
Several US Congressional hearings between 2022 and 2025 have focused on UAPs, with government whistleblowers alleging the retrieval of “non-human” biological matter.
The Obama administration previously declassified information about unidentified aerial phenomena from 2009 to 2017.