Former US President Barack Obama believes the truth about extraterrestrials is out there. Photo / Ricky Carioti, The Washington Post
Former US President Barack Obama this weekend appeared to drop an otherworldly bombshell: extraterrestrials exist.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said in a podcast released Sunday. “There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the President of the United States.”
The comments, coming in the 44th minute of a 47-minute interview with a popular liberal podcaster, sparked an outsize reaction on social media, including from UFO believers convinced the truth is out there and that government leaders have spent decades concealing it.
It was also notable what didn’t happen, at least in official Washington. Political pundits didn’t discuss Obama’s comments on Sunday’s roster of talk shows. His foes didn’t rush to mock or condemn him; his allies didn’t jump to support him. Many mainstream media outlets initially ignored his comments on aliens while transcribing his other podcast remarks.
In interviews, lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff members offered an explanation: the paranormal has become normal. They pointed to mounting political attention given to unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – the term that has replaced UFOs – and polls that show a growing belief in extraterrestrials. Some 56% of Americans believe aliens exist, according to a November poll conducted by YouGov.
Obama on Monday largely walked back his unearthly remarks, suggesting he was offering a pithy response in the spirit of the podcast’s “lightning round” and that he was simply performing cosmic maths.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” Obama wrote on Instagram. “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!”
Not long ago, the former President’s 24-hour dalliance with ETs would have represented a political earthquake, liability or both. When Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio, affirmed at a 2007 presidential debate that he believed he had seen an unidentified flying object, Time magazine dubbed the comments one of the “screw-ups” of that political campaign cycle. Debate moderator Tim Russert then asked whether Obama, at the time a Democratic senator from Illinois, believed in extraterrestrial life, too.
“I don’t know, and I don’t presume to know,” Obama responded, quickly pivoting from the question. “What I know is there is life here on Earth, and that we’re not attending to life here on Earth.”
At the time, about a third of Americans believed in UFOs, according to an Associated Press/Ipsos poll released that month.
But the political conversation has steadily shifted. Beginning in 2017, the New York Times and other media outlets have run reports on secret federal programmes that have studied unusual, seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Government agencies have released videos of aircraft that appeared to defy the laws of physics.
It’s a “legitimate question now”, former President Bill Clinton said in a 2022 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
That curiosity is bipartisan. The GOP-led House Oversight Committee in 2024 held a hearing on “exposing the truth” about unidentified aerial phenomena, citing reports by naval aviators and government officials who claim to have witnessed or received reports of strange vehicles. Marco Rubio, the nation’s Secretary of State and national security adviser, is among the now-dozens of officials and lawmakers who have demanded more information.
“We have people with very high jobs in the US Government that are either (a) liars; (b) crazy; or (c) telling the truth, and two of those three options are not good,” Rubio said in a Fox News interview in December, commenting on statements he said he had heard while serving in the US Senate. “I don’t know the answer.”
Officials across multiple administrations have said they are unaware of proof of celestial beings.
“I certainly wasn’t privy to any intelligence about alien life forms and believe me, I asked about it!” Sean Savett, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council during the Biden administration, wrote in a text message on Monday.
Obama in 2021 said he prioritised finding answers about extraterrestrial life as President, alluding to the conspiracy theories about Area 51 – a military base in Nevada that has been depicted in Hollywood productions as harbouring alien technology and even alien beings.
“When I came into office, I asked … ‘Is there the lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and space ship?’ And, you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was no,” Obama said in a 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
The current occupant of the Oval Office has been less publicly curious about interstellar matters. President Donald Trump told ABC News in 2019 he had a “brief meeting” on UFOs during his first administration and he didn’t particularly believe in aliens.
While the White House press office did not respond to questions Sunday about Obama’s comments or whether Trump had updated his views, current staff members said they weren’t aware of Trump discussing the topic.
“While POTUS often talks about things outside of my orbit, he’s never talked about things outside Earth’s orbit,” a White House official texted Sunday.
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