WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama told a podcast audience Saturday that aliens “are real,” then reversed course with an Instagram clarification Sunday night, saying he saw “no evidence” of extraterrestrial contact during his presidency.
The whiplash played out against a backdrop that makes the topic harder to laugh off than it once was: congressional hearings with sworn military testimony, a Pentagon office cataloging hundreds of unexplained sightings, and bipartisan legislation demanding the executive branch stop stonewalling lawmakers.
During a lightning-round segment on the Brian Tyler Cohen podcast, Obama was asked, “Are aliens real?”
“They’re real. But I haven’t seen them. And, they’re not being kept in Area 51,” Obama said. “There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy unless they hid it from the president of the United States.”
He also joked that his first question upon taking office was, “Where are the aliens?”
By Sunday night, the clip had gone viral, and Obama posted an Instagram clarification. “I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” he wrote. “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.”
This is not the first time the 44th president has waded into the subject. In a 2021 appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” Obama said, “There is 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.”
That 2021 comment drew attention because it came from a former commander in chief acknowledging, even obliquely, that the U.S. government possesses evidence of phenomena it cannot explain.
While Obama’s remarks made headlines, a parallel and more consequential effort has been underway on Capitol Hill.
On September 9, 2025, the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held its first UAP-focused hearing, titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection.” The witness list included something unprecedented: an active-duty Navy officer testifying publicly about unidentified phenomena.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins, a 23-year Navy veteran serving aboard the USS Jackson, described a 2023 incident in which a self-luminous, Tic Tac-shaped object emerged from the ocean and linked with three similar objects. He reported high-speed acceleration with no sonic boom or conventional propulsion signatures.
“When crews and watchstanders observe objects that maneuver or accelerate in ways that does not match known profiles and do so near our ships and aircraft, that is first and foremost a safety issue,” Wiggins testified before the committee.
Air Force veteran Jeffrey Nuccetelli, who served 16 years, described encounters near Vandenberg Air Force Base between 2003 and 2005 involving objects he compared to “flying buildings” with unusual pulsing movements. “What we saw changed our lives,” Nuccetelli told lawmakers.
Another Air Force veteran, Dylan Borland, alleged a UAP experience at Langley Air Force Base in 2012 and claimed his career was “deliberately obstructed” after reporting it.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) released video footage during the hearing showing an MQ-9 Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at a high-speed orb off the coast of Yemen in October 2024. The object appeared to be hit but was not destroyed.
The Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, released its annual report detailing 757 new UAP reports received between May 2023 and June 2024. An additional 272 were backdated incidents from 2021 and 2022, bringing the cumulative total to 1,652 reports as of October 2024.
Of those, 49 were resolved as balloons, birds, or unmanned aerial systems. Another 243 were recommended for closure as other prosaic objects. But 21 cases remain unexplained, particularly those involving video evidence, eyewitness testimony, and proximity to sensitive military sites.
The most common descriptions in the reports: unidentified lights and round, spherical, or orb-shaped objects.
Congress has moved beyond hearings. The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, passed in 2023, created the framework for disclosure. In 2025, Rep. Burlison introduced the UAP Disclosure Act of 2025 as an amendment to the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, seeking to expand government transparency on UAP records.
The conferenced version of the FY2026 NDAA now requires the Pentagon to brief lawmakers on UAP intercept operations dating back to 2004 and directs AARO to account for security classification guides that may have been used to restrict the release of UAP imagery and data.
Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet framed the stakes in constitutional terms. “There is a national security need for more UAP transparency,” Gallaudet said. “In 2025, the U.S. will spend over $900 billion on national defense, yet we still have an incomplete understanding of what is in our airspace.”
Gallaudet went further: “The failure of the Executive Branch to share UAP information with Congress is an infringement on the legislative branch that undermines separation of powers and may be creating a constitutional crisis.”
UAP journalist George Knapp, who also testified at the September hearing, pointed to a different concern. “Documents from military and intelligence personnel behind closed doors admit that these are real, not fictitious, that they can fly in formation, they’re evasive, and they outperform any aircraft known to exist, including ours,” Knapp told lawmakers.
He alleged that UAP-related programs had been transferred to private contractors, limiting government oversight. “They’ve had it for so long that there’s nobody left inside government or very few who know where it is,” Knapp said.
Obama’s weekend exchange illustrates a tension that has defined the UAP conversation for decades: public figures treat the subject as a punchline even as the government’s own records suggest something more serious.
The former president said aliens “are real” in a lightning round, then clarified he meant it statistically. Meanwhile, active-duty military officers are testifying under oath about objects emerging from the ocean, Congress is legislating disclosure deadlines, and the Pentagon’s own office has logged more than 1,600 reports, the vast majority of which remain unresolved.
The question is no longer whether unidentified objects exist in American airspace. The Pentagon has confirmed they do. The question is whether the government will tell the public what it knows about them.
Coloradans may vote this November on whether to add a “fundamental right to know” to the state’s constitutional Bill of Rights — a move...
DENVER — Colorado taxpayers who grew accustomed to receiving $750 or $800 TABOR refund checks will see those payments collapse to as little as...
WASHINGTON — Federal debt held by the public will reach 101% of GDP by the end of fiscal year 2026, a level not seen...