President Oprah? Winfrey doesn’t rule out 2020 run
WASHINGTON: Media mogul Oprah Winfrey did not say she was running for president, but she didn’t rule it out either, raising the unlikely prospect of a titanic celebrity- on- celebrity duel with Donald Trump in 2020.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV that aired on Wednesday, host David Rubenstein asked whether she had ever thought about her own White House campaign.
Winfrey, 63, replied, “I never considered the question even a possibility,” before adding: “I just thought, ‘Oh. Oh?’”
Reminded by her host that Trump’s victory proved one did not need government experience to be elected president, Winfrey fl irted with the prospect.
“That’s what I thought,” the former talk show icon said, in the interview taped in December about one month after Trump’s election win.
“I thought, ‘ Oh gee, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know enough.’ And now I’m thinking, ‘Oh.’”
The extraordinarily influential Winfrey was a strong supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Eight years earlier her endorsement of Barack Obama proved a critical factor in his primary victory over rival Clinton.
Winfrey is no stranger to discussing presidential politics.
I thought, ‘Oh gee, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know enough.’ And now I’m thinking, ‘Oh.’
In 1988, on the set of her talk show, she asked Trump, then 42, if he would ever run for president.
“Probably not,” the real estate mogul replied, before adding that if he did run, “I would have a hell of a chance of winning.”
Meanwhile, Winfrey said a woman in a restroom hectored her for not doing enough to help Clinton.
After Winfrey recounted how a woman had recently come up to her in a restroom to say how much Winfrey had done for her, Rubenstein asked his fellow billionaire if it’s hard to go to the bathroom in public.
“As a matter of fact it was, because there was another lady attacking me because she thought I didn’t do enough for Mrs Clinton,” Winfrey said. “So somebody else came out of a stall — this is yesterday — and said, ‘ Leave Oprah alone, she’s just trying to pee.’”
“And she followed me out talking about what I could have done, should have done, blah blah blah,” Winfrey added.
Oprah Winfrey, media mogul