Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There are moments in American political life when satire simply throws up its hands and says, “You know what? I can’t compete with this.”

Recently, on a podcast appearance, Barack Obama was asked the kind of question that has launched a thousand dorm-room debates: Do aliens exist? Obama responded with what can only be described as cosmological common sense. In a universe as vast as ours, he said, it’s reasonable to assume there’s probably life somewhere. But no, he added, he has never seen any evidence of little green bureaucrats filing intergalactic paperwork at the Pentagon.

This is not exactly the Roswell press conference people have been waiting for.

And yet, somehow, this was reframed as the former president “divulging classified information.” Cue dramatic music. Cue cable news graphics with glowing UFOs hovering over the Capitol dome. Because apparently acknowledging the statistical probability of extraterrestrial life in a universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies is now tantamount to leaking Area 51’s employee handbook.

Enter Donald Trump, our current maestro of the Oval Office megaphone, who suggested that Obama had let something slip. Something classified. Something secret. Perhaps the minutes from the last summit with the Andromedan trade delegation?

Here’s the circle we’re asked to square: On one side, a former president making a philosophical observation shared by astrophysicists, science teachers, and anyone who’s glanced at a Hubble photo. On the other, the suggestion that this observation constitutes the exposure of top-secret material. It’s like accusing someone of leaking nuclear launch codes because they said the sun exists.

The math is simple. Probability is not proof. Wonder is not intelligence briefings. Saying “the universe is big; life elsewhere seems plausible” is not the same as saying “we have three aliens in cold storage and they prefer oat milk.”

If anything, the episode reveals something less about extraterrestrials and more about our terrestrial politics. We’ve reached a place where basic scientific literacy can be spun as scandal, and speculation about cosmic life becomes fodder for partisan theatrics.

How do we square that circle? Perhaps by remembering that curiosity about the universe is not classified. It’s human. And unless NASA has been quietly hiding E.T. in a filing cabinet labeled “Miscellaneous,” acknowledging the vastness of space is not a state secret—it’s Astronomy 101.

If aliens are out there, one hopes they’re advanced enough to understand irony. Because from orbit, this must look absolutely fascinating.