Observers blasted left-wing podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen after former President Barack Obama expressed during an interview his belief that aliens are real — only to fail to ask him a follow-up question to expand on the existential admission.
During an episode of his podcast published Saturday, Cohen asked Obama, “Are aliens real?” as part of a lightning round. The 44th president replied in the affirmative and went on to raise the possibility of an “enormous conspiracy” — only for the progressive podcaster to respond with multiple unrelated questions rather than pressing Obama further on his unprecedented answer.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and 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 told Cohen, in what appears to be the first time in U.S. history a president expressed a belief aliens exist.
The podcaster then immediately asked the former commander in chief, “What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?”
I asked @BarackObama if aliens are real. pic.twitter.com/ZPw5zT9PfD
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) February 14, 2026
“Where are the aliens?” Obama said, prompting Cohen to laugh.
The host, however, did not take the former president’s cue to revisit his comments about extraterrestrial life. He instead asked, “Is there a person that you most want to meet that you haven’t met yet?”, prompting a one-minute-long discussion about Pope Leo XIV.
While Cohen’s interview with Obama was over 47 minutes long, the period of time between the first mention of aliens during the conversation to the last such mention was less than 30 seconds. Furthermore, the title of the episode, “Barack Obama BREAKS SILENCE [sic] on Trump’s ape video, Bad Bunny, and 2028 election,” does not tease any mention of the former president’s answer.
Cohen posted a clip of the exchange to X, prompting a series of replies from many of the platform’s users accusing him of missing an opportunity to coax potentially groundbreaking information out of a former president.
“Imagine getting a former president to say ‘aliens are real’ in plain english for the first time and then you ask ZERO follow up questions! You asked, he answered, you moved on,” fellow podcaster Jay Anderson replied to Cohen in a quote post. “Bro that’s fucking insane.”
Imagine getting a former president to say “aliens are real” in plain english for the first time and then you ask ZERO follow up questions!
Should Brian Tyler Cohen have asked more about Obama's alien comments?You asked, he answered, you moved on.
Bro that’s fucking insane. https://t.co/C8l6dEsGQ1
— Jay Anderson (@TheProjectUnity) February 15, 2026
As of Sunday afternoon, Anderson’s post received about five times as many “likes” as Cohen’s, despite his having about half the number of Cohen’s followers.
“This is not a flex this is one of the most epic interview fumbles of all time. Well done,” Anderson also wrote in a separate reply to the left-wing interviewer.
“And then when he said ‘they’re real’ – an affirmative answer unprecedented in the history of the American Presidency – you didn’t ask ‘how do you know that?’” Jesse Michaels, also a podcaster, similarly replied to Cohen. Michaels’s post also received significantly more “likes” than the original post of the clip.
“Are you the worst interviewer who ever lived?” Republican New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino wrote in a reply to Cohen.
British political commentator and priest Calvin Robinson called Cohen’s exchange with Obama “a master class in why not everyone is cut out to be a journalist.”
“When a former President of the United States says on the record there are aliens, YOU FOLLOW UP WITH RELEVANT QUESTIONS. You do not continue reading from your script,” Robinson added in an X reply.
Journalist Sonny Bunch called Obama’s response — which Cohen failed to probe — “a master class in politico-legal speak.”
“He admits the aliens are real while also denying a) that he’s seen them and b) that they’re stored at Area 51,” wrote Bunch, who currently serves as the culture editor of anti-Trump Substack The Bulwark. “The takeaway should be that yes aliens are real and they’re stored at Area 52.”
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