Barack Obama believes in aliens but did not discover any evidence of their existence during his time in the White House

During appearance on the No Lie With Brian Tyler Cohen podcast, Obama said: "They're real. But I haven't seen them. They're not being kept at ... Area 51. There's no underground facility - unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States."

Cohen then asked the former politician: "What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?" and Obama replied: "Where are the aliens?"

After the interview was published, Obama shared a clip showing him talking about aliens on his Instagram page and made an attempt to clarify his answers.

Obama wrote: "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!"

Obama was touching on long-running conspiracy theories which suggest the US government has been aware of alien life for decades and evidence has been stored at the Area 51 military base in Nevada.

It comes after former US President Bill Clinton gave his opinion on the existence of aliens and revealed he had his aides look into the rumours surrounding Area 51 and stories of an alien crash site near Roswell, New Mexico which emerged in the 1940s.

Speaking to TV talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in 2014, Clinton said: "[I asked my aides] to make sure there was no alien down there ... I had all the Roswell papers reviewed - everything."

He went on to add: "If we were visited someday I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it's not like [1996 movie] Independence Day ... It may be the only way to unite this increasingly divided world of ours ... think about all the differences among people of Earth would seem small if we feel threatened by a space invade. That's the whole theory of Independence Day. Everybody gets together and makes nice."