Obama: Odds are aliens are real but I saw no signs of contact while president

Politics Obama: Odds are aliens are real but I saw no evidence of contact while president February 16, 2026 / 7:42 AM EST / CBS/AP Add CBS News on Google After setting social media abuzz by saying on a podcast over the weekend that aliens were real, former President Barack Obama said he didn't see evidence that aliens "have made contact with us." During a lightning round of questions with podcast host Brian Tylor Cohen, Obama was asked, "Are aliens real?" "They're real," he answered, continuing, "But I haven't seen them. And, they're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility -- unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States." When asked what the first question was that he wanted answered when he became president, Obama joked: "Where are the aliens?" And he and Cohen laughed. On Sunday night, the former president released a statement on Instagram , appearing to clarify what he meant by his comments that have since gone viral. "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!" Secrecy around Area 51, a top-secret Cold War test site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts. In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the existence of the site but not UFO crashes, black-eyed extraterrestrials or staged moon landings. Declassified documents referred to the 8,000-square-mile installation by name after decades of U.S. government officials refusing to acknowledge it. The base has been a testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft including the U-2 in the 1950s, and later, the B-2 stealth bomber. In: Barack Obama