aliens
Do the Clintons believe in aliens?
00:56 - Source: CNN

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The next presidential election is grabbing ever more attention

And the stakes just might be out of this world

Washington CNN  — 

The next presidential election is grabbing ever more attention, and the stakes just might be out of this world.

During a meeting with The Conway Daily Sun, Hillary Clinton jokingly pledged to look into UFO’s, an article from the New Hampshire paper says.

“Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” Clinton said, tongue-in-cheek, in response to a question from reporter Daymond Steer on UFOs.

This was far from the first time someone in the former secretary of state’s orbit addressed the topic of intelligent life on other planets.

Former President Bill Clinton spoke about the topic at length in a 2007 interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. At the time, the former president said that he had reviewed government information on Roswell and Area 51, locations at the heart of some alien conspiracies. He claimed at the time that he had seen no evidence of visitors to Earth from another planet.

“If we were visited someday, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bill Clinton said. “I just hope that it’s not like ‘Independence Day.’”

Steer wrote that when he asked the Democratic front-runner about her husband’s comments, she claimed that aliens may have already visited our planet.

“We don’t know for sure,” Clinton said.

Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta, has made his interest in the possibility of alien life and conspiratorial leanings towards Area 51 well known. During his time serving in the Obama administration, Podesta tweeted, “Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisstilloutthere cc: @NYTimesDowd.”

(Note that this Twitter account is now run by the current senior adviser to the President, Brian Deese, and the handle has changed to reflect that.)

Steere said that Clinton brought up Podesta’s passion for aliens, and that he wanted to make it a priority in a potential Hillary Clinton administration.

“Maybe we could have, like a task force to go to Area 51,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s made similar jokes about aliens on the campaign trail.

It is also worth noting CNN held the last Democratic Debate of 2015 two hours from Area 51, and CNN spoke with the activists there about politics both presidential and planetary.