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Indeed, the person most famous for arguing against the mandated usage of gender-neutral pronouns, Canada’s own Jordan Peterson, was quickly booked onto Fox & Friends to discuss Trudeau’s use of “peoplekind.”

“I’m afraid that our prime minister is only capable of running his ideas on a few very narrow ideological tracks,” Peterson said on the show Tuesday. “I think he runs an ideology in his head and accepts the output without question, and I think we’re really going to pay for it in Canada in ways that we can’t yet imagine.”

Is it possible everybody’s overreacting here? Was Trudeau just trying to be funny?

The critics may be right in pointing out that what came out of his mouth was an ill-considered lecture on language, but as the prime minister now says, it all started as an attempt to make a joke.

When viewing the full exchange, the woman’s question (which starts at the 1:06:37 point in this video) lasts an astonishing four minutes — a substantial portion of which consists of her proselytizing for her church, to the growing annoyance of the audience.

She rambles on the theme of female equality in religion, and at one point she thanks Trudeau for ensuring gender parity in his cabinet. Even the sentence that ultimately leads Trudeau to interject is oddly contradictory on gender, though perhaps on purpose: “Maternal love is the love that’s going to change the future of mankind,” she says.

So Trudeau’s comment seems to have been a joke about the irony of it — and also an attempt to relieve tension, given the audience had been booing the questioner for taking so much time. The woman herself took it in that spirit, as she laughs and says “Exactly!”