Former US President Barack Obama clarifies comments made in an interview, saying he saw no proof of extraterrestrial contact during his presidency
Former US President Barack Obama said he has seen no evidence that extraterrestrials have made contact with Earth, seeking to clarify remarks that went viral after a recent podcast appearance.
According to a CNN report, Obama came under the spotlight over the weekend following an interview with US podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen in which he appeared to acknowledge the existence of aliens.
Towards the end of the interview, which touched on a broad range of topics including the fatal shootings of protesters by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis — incidents that have sparked national controversy and protests over immigration enforcement tactics in Minnesota by ICE and federal agents, including the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal officers earlier this year — Cohen initiated a rapid-fire “lightning round” of questions.
The first query was: “Are aliens real?
“They’re real but I haven’t seen them,” CNN quoted Obama as saying.
“And they’re not being kept in… 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.”
The second question in that round was “what was the first question that you wanted answered when you became president?,” to which Obama replied, laughing: “Where are the aliens?” The interviewer did not delve into the response, instead going straight onto the next question.
Obama’s remarks were widely circulated by international media and across social media platforms, prompting him to clarify his comments later on Sunday.
The former president shared a clip of his initial response on Instagram, along with a brief statement, writing: “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 extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
It is not the first time that Obama has commented on the matter.
Speaking previously on The Late Late Show with James Corden, he said: “What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are.”
“We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
Conspiracy theories about extraterrestrial life have long centered on Area 51, the highly classified US Air Force installation at Groom Lake in southern Nevada.
One enduring UFO theory claims that debris from a flying saucer that allegedly crashed in 1947 in Roswell was secretly transported to Area 51 for reverse-engineering in an attempt to replicate alien spacecraft technology.
Public suspicion around the issue remains significant. A June 2019 poll by YouGov found that 54% of US adults believe the government likely knows more than it has disclosed about UFOs.
With inputs from agencies
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