Former President Barack Obama set off a minor online conflagration after opining about what would happen if women were in control of all governments.
The 60-year-old made the comments during an interview Monday with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at Salem State University.
‘They’d be better. I’m confident about that. I really do!’
“Even when I was president I sometimes fantasized about if you put women in charge of every government for like two years and then just kind of saw, all right, how are things going?” said Obama to some laughter in the audience.
“I have a strong belief that things would — they wouldn’t be perfect,” he added.
“But they’d be better!” interrupted Kearns, a woman.
“But they’d be better. I’m confident about that. I really do!” Obama added.
Footage of the comments was posted to social media, where they went viral after many ridiculed his sentiment.
“Ignore both the traditional teachings of [virtually] every religion, as well as all of the lessons from thousands of years of human experience,” responded Jeremy Carl, a fellow at the Claremont Institute.
“He took away the Presidential nomination from a woman,” said one detractor.
“Brother, do you not remember knocking Hillary Clinton out of the primary & thus lay-up Presidential Run of 2008? You prevented America having the first female President. It’s the only thing you & Trump have in common,” read another reply.
“It’s like he was in a cave for the entire [Lindsay] Clancy trial,” responded Republican Lisa Cusack.
Elsewhere in the interview, Obama encouraged the attendees that the country was divided but could come together.
“Today, we are rife with divisions, and our democracy seems broken in so many ways — and the tenor and tone of the times feel mean-spirited,” he said.
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“We’ve gone through times like this before. I believe we can get out of them. And when I travel around the country today, or I work with the young people I work with,” he added, “what you discover is we aren’t as divided as we seem at the ground level.”
He also said the progress on women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and civil rights has not been reversed and most people support them.
“We’re not as divided as our politics or our media would indicate,” he concluded.
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