Obama weighs in on Colbert for president, current political climate, and aliens on ‘The Late Show’

In an interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” Tuesday, former president Barack Obama took a subtle swipe at the current commander in chief.

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When Colbert told Obama that he’s been encouraged to consider running for president when his CBS show goes off the air at the end of the month, the former president didn’t discourage the idea.

“Put it this way,” Obama said. “I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we’ve seen. … I have great confidence in that.”

Ba-dum-tss!

In the pre-taped conversation at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which opens in June, the former president didn’t mention his successor by name, but did raise concerns about some of the actions of the Trump administration.

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“We can survive a lot,” Obama said. “We can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system. The awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation in which whoever is in charge of the government starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.

“The second thing is our military,” he said. “Don’t politicize our military.”

Colbert also asked Obama about a comment he made earlier this year about the existence of aliens. Talking to podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen in February, Obama said: “They’re real but I haven’t seen them. … 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.”

In his sitdown with Colbert, Obama clarified (sort of) his earlier remark.

“For those of you who still think that we’ve gotten little green men underground somewhere, one of the things you learn as president is that the government is terrible at keeping secrets,” he said. “This idea of conspiracy theories — if there were aliens or alien spaceships or anything under the control of the United States government … I promise you some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with one of the aliens and sent it to his girlfriend to impress her. There would be leaks.”

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