Obama says aliens exist, but not at Nevada’s Area 51

Attention, local extraterrestrial believers and conspiracy theorists: former President Barack Obama said in a podcast interview Saturday that aliens are real, but they aren’t at Nevada’s Area 51.

During an appearance on YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen’s show, Obama said he hadn’t seen extraterrestrials but that they existed.

“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 said during a rapid-fire round of questions at the end of the interview.

Cohen didn’t ask a follow-up question on the subject, and Obama didn’t explain his answer further.

“What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?” Cohen asked next.

“Where are the aliens?” Obama replied with a laugh.

But Obama clarified his position in an Instagram post on Sunday.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” he wrote in the post. “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!”

What is Area 51?

Area 51, the classified operating location near the Nevada National Security Site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has long captured popular culture’s attention as a government facility believed to be holding UFOs and aliens.

In reality, the site has been a test bed for the nation’s high-tech aircraft dating back to when it was established in 1955 to test the high-flying U-2 spy plane. But the U.S. government did not acknowledge the facility’s existence until 2013, when the CIA declassified documents confirming Area 51’s use as a testing site for U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

The secrecy surrounding the site’s purpose has made Area 51 the subject of countless out-of-this-world conspiracies, including claims that the facility holds pieces of alien spacecraft and technology that workers are trying to reverse-engineer.

That gave way to an alien fanatic subculture tied to Southern Nevada, with souvenir shops and businesses like the Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa Valley and the Little A’Le’Inn in Rachel dotting the desert. In 1996, the state renamed Nevada Route 375 to Extraterrestrial Highway because of its proximity to Area 51, also known as Groom Lake.

Businesses in the area did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday afternoon.

Before the Las Vegas Aviators moved to Las Vegas Ballpark in 2019, the Triple-A baseball team played at Cashman Field from 2001 to 2018 as the Las Vegas 51s. 

‘See them aliens’

National media attention turned to Area 51 in September 2019 after a viral social media post saw millions demand a glimpse of extraterrestrial life.

A tongue-in-cheek Facebook event made by California man Matty Roberts had more than 2 million people sign up to storm Area 51, all pledging to run into the facility and “see them aliens.”

What began as an online joke became a four-day music festival known as Alienstock that drew thousands to the small Lincoln County communities of Rachel and Hiko, both located near Area 51.

Obama’s comments aren’t likely to sway the myth’s believers. An Ipsos poll conducted during the Storm Area 51 social media movement found a quarter of Americans thought that crashed UFO spacecrafts are held at the site. Slightly more than half of Americans, 52 percent, believed that extraterrestrial life exists.