Jesse Watters asked if Barack Obama’s fantasy of women running every government is a fetish, or just a bid for Michelle Obama’s approval.

On Friday’s edition of The Five, Fox News host Jesse Watters opened the show by pressing former President Barack Obama over fresh remarks about putting women in charge of every government for two years. The panel played a clip from Obama’s Massachusetts event earlier in the week, and the exchange quickly turned to motives, double standards, and what counts as acceptable sexism in elite progressive talk.

AOL reported the Friday, Sept. 25 broadcast and the panel’s reaction after Obama’s comments circulated.

Obama told the Massachusetts audience he had long nursed the idea, even while in office.

"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 kinda saw alright, how things going. I have a strong belief that things, wouldn't be perfect, but they'd be better. I'm confident about that."

Watters did not treat the line as harmless daydreaming. He put the question directly to viewers and the panel.

"Why do you think he's saying something like this? Is he looking for, I don't know, approval from Michelle? Or is he just fantasizing about being controlled by women? Is it a fetish?"

Gutfeld says the applause runs only one way

Co-host Greg Gutfeld answered at once. He mocked the idea that Obama had discovered something bold.

"At least it’s about women."

Gutfeld then called the pitch familiar internet filler, not leadership insight.

"I love how he acts like this is new, this is the sentiment you could find in the comment section of any Reddit post, this is nothing revolutionary."

He drew the contrast the left rarely allows. Flip the sexes, he said, and the cost would be immediate.

"But imagine if he had said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if for two years only men could vote or if only men drove.'"

Gutfeld’s point was simple: one version of sex-based rule-making is punished; the other is praised because it moves in the “approved direction.”

"See, there’s a cost to saying that; there’s no cost to this kind of sexism because it travels in the approved direction."

He went further, arguing the real insult lands on women, as flattery meant to soothe, not as a serious claim about governing.

"But it’s really not sexist to men; it’s sexist to women because it’s meant to calm their distress, to make them feel better."

Then came the punch lines about what a women-only governing experiment might look like in practice, including a State of the Union and the Pentagon budget.

"Could you imagine the State of the Union?"

"It’d be two hours long, and it would be about something you did five years ago. The Pentagon budget would need millions just for little black dresses that you can wear to more than just one conflict."

That is the core of the segment: not a policy paper, but a former president floating sex-based control of “every government,” and a prime-time panel refusing to clap on cue. For readers still weighing Obama’s old political record, the casual certainty lands with extra weight.

Michelle Obama already told voters the country isn’t ready

The same article tied the moment to Michelle Obama’s November 2025 conversation with Tracee Ellis Ross at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, later shared on Michelle Obama’s YouTube channel. The former first lady was blunt about a female president.

She said the United States is “not ready” and has “a lot of growing up to do” before it gets there.

"Don’t even look at me about running because you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time."

She added that “a lot of men” still reject female leadership, “And we saw it.”

Set side by side, the Obamas’ messages pull in opposite directions. He sells a two-year trial of women running every government as an obvious upgrade. She tells the country it is too immature to elect a woman and warns people not to waste her time. That tension is the story, not a cable-news gag. It also sits beside other lingering fights over his legacy, from claims the government is cleaner than ever to courtroom battles tied to his appointees.

Elite talk meets a basic fairness test

Watters’ “fetish” line was crude by design. It forced a motive question Obama’s admirers prefer to skip: is this governing theory, domestic politics, or fashion-statement feminism from a man who left office years ago?

Gutfeld’s stronger claim needs no theatrics. If a former president can daydream out loud about locking men out of power for two years, and face cheers instead of career damage, the culture has a one-way speech code. Taxpayers and voters living with real results, crime, borders, budgets, schools, are supposed to treat that code as moral progress.

The same progressive orbit still produces integrity headaches, including a former Obama press aide charged with fraud, while Obama-appointed judges keep drawing fire in live policy fights. None of that proves Obama’s Massachusetts line was a “fetish.” It does show why a Fox panel refused to treat gender-based power fantasies as enlightened common sense.

Obama offered no data from the clip, only confidence that women in charge of every government would make things “better.” Michelle Obama offered a flat political veto on readiness. Watters and Gutfeld answered with the question elites hate most: why is this version of sexism free?

Separate fights over an Obama-appointed judge’s “weak sauce” ruling and another jurist’s block on Somalia TPS termination keep the same name in the accountability lane. The Friday segment was narrower. It was about a former president’s fantasy, a first lady’s scolding, and a prime-time refusal to pretend the double standard is invisible.

When powerful voices sell sex-based rule as virtue, voters are right to ask who the lecture is really for, and who pays when ideology replaces results.