Obama clarification on aliens comment came at urging of podcast host after online backlash

Liberal podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen defended his questioning of former President Barack Obama on Monday after the former president's response to a question about aliens went viral and revealed that he asked Obama to clarify his comments.

Cohen posted a video on Monday explaining that he thought Obama, based on his answer during their interview, believes aliens are real, "but that if he hasn't seen them, it's because they're not here."

"It felt clear to me. It felt clear to the other people in the room, but apparently it was not clear to others because, dear God, did the criticism roll in," the podcast host explained.

"I decided to reach out to the president's team and ask if he'd be willing to make a clarification to his statement, which he did," Cohen said before reading Obama's statement.

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During Cohen's interview, the host asked Obama point-blank if aliens are real. Obama said, "they are real," but said that he hasn't seen them, and that they're not being kept at the Nevada Air Force base known as Area 51.

He also said, "There's no underground facility, unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."

The former president's statement about the comments were posted to his Instagram on Sunday.

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"I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention, let me clarify," Obama said on Instagram. "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!"

Cohen, whose show has over 5 million YouTube subscribers, also defended himself against online criticism that followed his interview. Critics said he should have asked follow-up questions in the moment like a journalist likely would have.

"His clarification was exactly what I thought he meant and why I didn't continue with the line of questioning. Should I have asked the follow-up anyway to be crystal clear? Absolutely. And frankly, that's just something that I'm going to have to live with. Um, and in fact, I won't lie, I've been a little bummed with the commentary, the discourse surrounding that issue, people saying that I dropped the ball or committed a generational fumble, which hurts," Cohen said.

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The former president also spoke to Cohen about the Democratic Party, the Trump administration and more. 

Obama warned during the conversation that politicians could "age out" and lose a crucial connection to a younger electorate.

"I'm not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times and the particular struggles that folks are thinking about as they look towards the future, rather than look backward toward the past," Obama said.

"I'm a pretty healthy 64, feel great, but the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok and such, I don't know who they're talking about," Obama said in the interview. "There is an element of, at some point, you age out. You're not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through."