WASHINGTON — He needed more space and time.
Former President Barack Obama has clarified his casual but dramatic claim that aliens are “real,” caveating that he never came across solid evidence of extraterrestrial life during his presidency.
The 44th president set the internet ablaze over the weekend for confidently proclaiming on a liberal podcast that aliens are real while dismissing conspiracy theories about them being housed in Nevada’s Area 51.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” Obama explained on Instagram. “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 [sic], and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” he added. “Really!”
Obama made the comment during an episode of the “No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen” podcast that dropped Saturday.
“They’re real,” Obama replied when Cohen asked about aliens. “But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51.”
“There’s no underground facility — unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
Obama has long made clear he believes that alien life exists.
During an appearance on CBS’ “The Late Late Show” in 2021, the former president revealed that he asked questions about aliens shortly after taking office in 2009.
“I asked, right? I was like, ‘All right, is there [a] lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?’ And you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was no,” he recounted to host James Corden.
“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,” Obama added. “We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern.”
“I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
Interest in UFOs has soared in recent years, due to a series of bizarre encounters apparently captured on video, though the supposed footage is almost always very grainy or blurry.
In one instance, radar footage captured by US Air Force Reaper drones 13 years ago showed a mysterious UAP over the Middle East.
Notably, President Trump has cast doubt on claims about alien life roaming the Earth.
“I want them to think whatever they think,” Trump told ABC News in 2019. “They do say, and I’ve seen, and I’ve read, and I’ve heard. And I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particular[ly].”
