On Brian Tyler Cohen’s “No Lie” podcast, released around February 14, 2026, in a Q&A segment towards the end, Barack Obama fielded a question about “aliens.” Are they real?
They’re real, but I haven’t seen them. And they’re not being kept in . . . what is it? Area 51.
While Area 51 has become the default punchline in media (thanks to movies, memes, and the 2019 “Storm Area 51” viral event), serious UFO researchers and whistleblower claims (from Bob Lazar’s talks with Nevada newsman George Knapp to David Grusch’s 2023 congressional testimony) almost always point elsewhere for alleged crash retrievals and “biologics.”
Main target?
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — specifically the “Hangar 18” myth, popularized in the 1970s by figures like Robert Spencer Carr. The site is also tied to Roswell debris allegedly being shipped there post-1947, with reverse-engineering and body storage rumors persisting in books and eyewitness accounts. Other locations pop up variably (Dugway, Los Alamos, etc.), but Wright-Pat edges out Area 51 in many traditional narratives for the “bodies” angle.
And, according to lore, comedian Jackie Gleason (a known UFO enthusiast) reportedly told his then-wife Beverly McKittrick that President Richard Nixon, a golfing buddy, drove him late one night in February 1973 to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. There, Gleason allegedly viewed embalmed alien bodies (small, about two feet long, with big heads/ears) in a secure building — possibly recovered from a crash or retrieval. The tale surfaced publicly via Beverly after their divorce. It’s often retold. And it adds a Florida candidate for an inventory of “dead aliens,” not the infamous Nevada site.
This all sounds far-fetched, and Obama tried immediately to throw water on the flame:
There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States.
Of course, the military has scads of underground facilities, so the “enormous conspiracy” caveat seems almost designed to fan the flames, not quench them. How many more votes just switched to Enormous Conspiracy?
Later, Obama tried to walk it further back:
He followed up with statistical reasoning about the vast universe making life probable, emphasizing no evidence of contact or hidden bodies during his presidency (and later clarified on social media that he saw “no evidence” of extraterrestrials making contact).
But the story did not stop with the former president.
Fox White House Correspondent Peter Doocy: Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?
President Donald J. Trump: Well, he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that, you know.
Doocy: So, aliens are real.
Trump: Well, I don’t know if they’re real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He’s not supposed to be doing that. He made — He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don’t — I don’t have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it. Do you believe it, Peter?
Doocy: Well, the president can declassify anything that he wants to. So . . .
Trump: . . . I may get him out of trouble by declassify[ing].
Q&A at the steps of Air Force One, February 19, 2026.
What an odd way to respond.
But the oddities aren’t decreasing:
What will Trump do, though — and what is he up against?