Conspiracy Theorists Think Obama Is Sending Secret Messages With Talk About Aliens
President Barack Obama made what appeared to be a startling admission about aliens over the weekend. “They’re real,” the former president said. And then everyone tried to figure out what he actually meant. Granted, Obama said in that same interview, “I haven’t seen them,” and “they’re not being kept in Area 51.” Obama also released a statement clarifying his remarks after all of the news outlets ran with headlines along the lines of “President Obama Says Aliens Are Real.” But that didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists who believe that all U.S. presidents know exactly where the little green bodies are buried. Liberal influencer Brian Tyler Cohen interviewed Obama for a video that was published Feb. 14, touching on a variety of topics, from racism to ICE raids. But it was a lightning round at the end that got the most attention, with Cohen asking, “Are aliens real?”
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama responded. “And they’re not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.” This being the lightning round portion at the end of the interview, Cohen didn’t even seem to intentionally be asking a follow-up question when he said, “What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?” Obama responded, “Where are the aliens?” They just had a laugh.
Cohen then moved on to other fast questions like “Is there a person that you most wanna meet that you haven’t met yet?” The answer, if you’re curious, was the new pope. Social media users pointed out that Cohen probably should’ve asked Obama some real follow-up questions about the aliens, but he didn’t. And that ambiguity left people wondering what the hell Obama may have been trying to say. So Obama posted a message to Instagram to clarify:
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. 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 took that ambiguity and added their own little spin, as they often do. And the consensus among the conspiracy-minded seems to be that Obama is trying to get humanity ready for the big reveal. There’s long been a strain of thought among the UFO-spotting community that potential cover-ups by the federal government are orchestrated over fears that the broader public would freak out if they knew the truth about aliens. And some conspiracy theorists think that a slow-drip approach to knowledge about aliens is just a way to make sure our brains aren’t broken by the revelations that aliens exist. One comment on the subreddit r/aliens explained: Nah pay attention to what he said. He says they’re not at area 51 then says, “There isn’t an underground facility (who mentioned an underground facility?) unless there’s some grand conspiratorial reason that the president can’t know that sort of thing.” He’s referring to need to know. They told him everything he needed to know and nothing more. He’s saying they’re in some underground facility, maybe area 51 maybe not, (he let the other guy say the place on purpose if you noticed) and that’s all he knows because presidents don’t automatically have need to know about everything. The commenters understood that Obama was just giving signals to people in the know about aliens, as they understood it, with another Reddit comment reading, “the way Obama sipped his tea and blinked his eyes whilst implicating a mass conspiracy was interesting.” Still another commenter concurred, writing “Absolutely. Couldn’t have been clearer to me. Many will deny it but Obama is talking to a subset of the population whom he knows will understand.” Another commenter insisted: When you look at Obamas statements over the years you can clearly see a progression. First he said: When it comes to aliens there are some things I can´t tell you on television Then he said he looked into the files but: Sorry, can´t talk about that.:-) Now he says flat: Aliens are real It is a progression to make people aware of something coming. What´s funny is that he never mentioned Aliens in a “indigestibble truth” vibe but much more easy going….. In my opinion he is the real disclosure president and most people don´t get it yet. You can’t be too hard on the conspiracy theorists when it comes to aliens. We’ve seen the release of UAP videos in the past decade that are hard to explain, along with congressional hearings that take the topic much more seriously than previous generations. But we’ve also seen stories that should give the true believers pause. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, has taken the potential for alien encounters on Earth seriously, but she has landed on one of the least plausible explanations: That they’re interdimensional beings—which is to say, angels from heaven. The Wall Street Journal also published a fascinating article last year documenting how the Pentagon has used conspiracy theories around Area 51 to its own advantage. At times, the U.S. military even deliberately spread disinformation about aliens as a way to distract from real work being done on advanced technology for next-generation stealth fighters. Other times, the alien chatter was just a hazing ritual in the U.S. Air Force. From the Wall Street Journal article published in June 2025: For decades, certain new commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs, as part of their induction briefings, would be handed a piece of paper with a photo of what looked like a flying saucer. The craft was described as an antigravity maneuvering vehicle. The officers were told that the program they were joining, dubbed Yankee Blue, was part of an effort to reverse-engineer the technology on the craft. They were told never to mention it again. Many never learned it was fake. Kirkpatrick found the practice had begun decades before, and appeared to continue still. The defense secretary’s office sent a memo out across the service in the spring of 2023 ordering the practice to stop immediately, but the damage was done. Investigators are still trying to determine why officers had misled subordinates, whether as some type of loyalty test, a more deliberate attempt to deceive or something else. When President Joe Biden’s White House looked into the matter in 2023, an Air Force official reportedly confirmed the hazing ritual was real and said, “We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people. These men signed NDAs. They thought it was real.” A good conspiracy theorist will obviously see right through the ruse here and determine that the government actually leaked all of this “hazing” stuff to a Wall Street Journal reporter to throw everyone off the scent. But real ones know the truth. Barack Obama has seen the aliens, and he’s trying to get the word out before the big reveal that shakes humanity to its core. Obviously.
