Former President Barack Obama has clarified that during his term, he saw "no evidence" that aliens are real, after declaring the existence of extraterrestrials in a podcast clip that blew up over the weekend.
Obama sat down with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen for an interview that was released Saturday.
Toward the end of the interview, Cohen asked Obama a series of questions in what he called a "lightning round" — starting off strong with the question most Americans want the answer to: "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 responded nonchalantly.
Cohen then went straight to his second question, asking the former president what the first question was that he wanted answered when he took office in 2008.
With a laugh, Obama replied: "Where are the aliens?"
That clip made its rounds on the internet over the weekend, prompting Obama to post the clip to his Instagram account with a clarifying caption.
Obama said he was "trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round" when answering that question, but that he wanted to clarify his response.
"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there," Obama said 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!"
Conspiracy theorists have long held the belief that the government is keeping extraterrestrials at a highly classified United States Air Force base in southern Nevada, but there is no proof to back up those claims.
