Obama Jokes That First Question He Asked as President Concerned Aliens: 'Is There a Lab Somewhere?'

Terence Patrick/CBS James Corden (left) and Barack Obama on The Late Late Show with James Corden

Barack Obama had one question when he first took office as president of the United States in 2009: Where are the aliens?

"When it comes to the aliens, there are some things I just can't tell you on-air," the former president joked on Monday's episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden, after band leader Reggie Watts asked whether Obama "had a theory" about recent reports of unidentified flying objects.

Obama continued: "The truth is, that when I came into office, I asked, 'Is there the lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?' And they did a little bit of research, and the answer is no."

Still, Obama acknowledged that leaked videos of UFOs soaring through the sky are indeed real — and unexplainable for now.

"But what is true — and I'm actually being serious here — is there are, there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," Obama said. "We can't explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern."

Obama continued by joking that Watts himself might be "deflecting" by asking the question in the first place.

"I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today — unless ... See here's the question: Reggie might secretly be an alien," Obama joked. "Right? You remember Men in Black? So when he asks all these questions, he's deflecting? Do we know what he looks like behind those glasses? His eyes might blink in the wrong direction."

RELATED: Shocking Video of Pyramid-Shaped UFO Is Real — and Part of 'Ongoing Examinations,' Pentagon Says

In April, the Department of Defense confirmed that footage of a blinking, pyramid-shaped object mid-flight is legitimate, and was taken by Navy personnel in 2019.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough told CNN at the time that the videos — along with photos that depict three other UFOs — are part of its "ongoing examinations" of UFOs (which the government refers to as "unidentified aerial phenomena.")

"As we have said before, to maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP," Gough said.

The Department of Defense created the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in August to investigate such sightings and the U.S. government is expected to release a detailed report about UFOs on June 1, according to USA Today.

While Congress is expected to be briefed on that report, it's unclear whether the information therein will become public, due to the amount of classified information on U.S. defense systems it will contain.

RELATED: 'Unexplained' UFO Sightings Haven't 'Been Made Public,' Former Official Says Before U.S. Report

In a recent interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, former intelligence director John Ratcliffe said the report will likely encompass sightings from all over the world, including many that have not yet been made public.

"We are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don't have the technology for or are traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom," Ratcliffe said.

He continued elsewhere in the interview: "There are instances where we don't have good explanations for some of the things that we've seen. And when that information becomes declassified, I'll be able to talk a little bit more about that."