Former U.S. President Barack Obama clarifies comments about aliens

Former U.S. President Barack Obama has clarified his comments about extraterrestrial life.

Amid a Q&A speed round during an appearance on the No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen podcast last week, the American politician asserted aliens are "real" but maintained that he had never actually seen any evidence.

"They're not being kept at Area 51," he stated. "There's no underground facility - unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States."

But after the clip went viral on social media, Obama returned to Instagram on Sunday to address his claims.

"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," he wrote. "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."

To conclude, the 64-year-old simply added: "Really!"

Obama served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

Accordingly, the author was quickly inundated with responses from some of his 41 million followers.

"Naaaaaaaaaaah bro! Show me ET!!!! We want E.T!!!!! Or at the very least...Marvin the Martian," replied actor Lamorne Morris, while another user joked: "Blink twice if the aliens made you say this."

Previously, Obama reflected on his interest in learning about extraterrestrial activity as part of an interview for The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2021.

"The truth is that when I came into office, I asked, right, I was like, 'Alright, is there (a) lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?' And... they did a little bit of research and the answer was no," he said at the time. "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."