Barack Obama has charged as much as $955 a seat to tell audiences that men are the source of the world's problems.
His latest performance was at Salem State University, and it landed on Fox News.
One Democrat on the panel skipped the debate and went straight to what Barack Obama has never once addressed.
Obama's Women in Charge Claim Started in Singapore in 2019
Barack Obama stood before about 3,600 people at Salem State University, sat down with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and delivered a statement he first made in 2019.
He told the audience he used to "fantasize" as president about putting women in charge of every government on earth for two years to see how things went.
"I have a strong belief that things would – they wouldn't be perfect, but they'd be better," Obama said. "I'm confident about that."
The line drew applause, which it was designed to do.
At the same event, he told the same audience that "old men clinging to power" is one of the world's biggest problems.
Obama described such men as "afraid of irrelevance and death" – and told the Salem State audience not to encourage it.
Barack Obama left office in 2017 and has not quite left since.
Obama made nearly identical remarks about women in December 2019 at a private speaking event in Singapore.
At that event, he told the audience women were "pretty indisputably" better than men and that two years of female-led governments would produce improvements "on just about everything."
The Singapore speech went further, predicting that a world run by women would mean less war, children better cared for, and general improvements in living standards.
He added a pointed attack on men in power: "If you look at the world and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way."
Greg Gutfeld, reacting to the Salem State clip on Gutfeld!, called Obama the "human embodiment of an NPR tote bag."
On The Five, Jesse Watters asked the panel whether Obama was looking for approval from Michelle. "Is it a fetish, Harold?" he added.
Gutfeld cut to the real reason: "He was trying to ingratiate himself with the audience. You know, you just don't say it. He is not even trying anymore."
Harold Ford on The Five Brought Up Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008
Harold Ford Jr. – a Fox News contributor who generally defends Democrat positions – sat with Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, and the rest of The Five panel and raised a question that landed like a verdict.
"I wonder how Hillary Clinton feels listening to this," Ford said, "because he defeated the woman who many in the Democratic Party thought was the most qualified and the most capable person to be president."
Obama did not just run against Hillary Clinton in 2008.
He won a nasty race.
Democrat primary voters chose him over the woman most of his own party had considered inevitable, and he then appointed her Secretary of State – the most senior position he could offer short of the one she had campaigned for.
Fox News has reported that Obama privately considered Hillary the stronger choice over Biden to carry his legacy forward.
None of that came up at Salem State – that crowd paid nothing but their attention and got exactly what they came for.
What nobody in that room asked – what nobody on the speaking circuit ever asks – was the question Ford raised without hesitation on Fox News.
Obama has delivered this theory on stages from Singapore to Salem for seven years.
When he says women should run everything, he means Democrat women – the kind whose records in cities like San Francisco and Chicago are available for anyone to examine.
In 2008, he ran the opposite argument against the most prominent woman in his own party and won.
Two years ago, the candidate he raised money for was an 81-year-old man his own party eventually pushed out of the race.
The applause since then has been for a different argument.
Sources:
- Ian Schwartz, "Obama: I Strongly Believe 'Things Would Be Better' If Women Were In Charge Of Every Government For Two Years," RealClearPolitics, September 25, 2026.
- Ian Schwartz, "Harold Ford Jr.: I Wonder How Hillary Clinton Feels About Obama Saying It 'Would Be Better' If Women Were In Charge," RealClearPolitics, September 26, 2026.
- Staff, "Barack Obama: Women 'Indisputably Better' as Leaders, 'Old Men' Get in the Way," Fox News, December 18, 2019.
- Stacey Matthews, "Hot Takes: Obama Fumbles Big Time on Issue of Women in Power, and People Have Thoughts," RedState, September 24, 2026.
- Nick Arama, "Obama Gets Wrecked and Served Some Reality After His Comment About Old Men and Power Goes Viral," RedState, September 25, 2026.
- Staff, "Gutfeld: Barack Has a Fix, a World Run by Chicks," Gutfeld!, Fox News, September 25, 2026.