Barack Obama Clarifies Alien Comments Made During Podcast

"They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in Area 51," Obama said.

Barack Obama had to clarify a statement he made during an appearance on a podcast.

The former president participated in an interview with podcaster Brian Cohen. Toward the end, Cohen asked Obama a series of questions in what he called a “lightning round.” During that, he asked “are aliens real?”

“They’re real, 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,” Obama answered. A clip of that part of the podcast went viral prompting Obama to 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,” Obama said.