Oprah Winfrey says she is not interested in running for president but adds that she is sympathetic to the people who tell her the world needs her.
After Winfrey’s political speech at the Golden Globe awards, social media and political commentators fawned that perhaps the former TV talk show host would challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. Winfrey told InStyle magazine Wednesday that she is not interested in campaigning for the highest office in America, though she said running wouldn’t be that difficult.
“I actually saw a mug the other day” that said Oprah 2020, Winfrey told InStyle. “I thought it was a cute mug. All you need is a mug and some campaign literature and a T-shirt.”
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She’s not interested in running for president, she said, because she knows her limits.
“I’ve always felt very secure and confident with myself in knowing what I could do and what I could not. And so it’s not something that interests me. I don’t have the DNA for it,” Winfrey said.
Winfrey’s longtime confidant Stedman Graham told The Los Angeles Times in early January that Winfrey “would absolutely” run for president, and that “it’s up to the people” whether she mounts a campaign.
Winfrey told InStyle that she “met with someone the other day who said that they would help me with a campaign” but that she’s still not interested.
Gayle King, another friend of Winfrey, has also pushed Oprah to consider campaigning. King “has been calling me regularly and texting me things, like a woman in the airport saying, ‘When’s Oprah going to run?’” Winfrey told InStyle. “So Gayle sends me these things, and then she’ll go, ‘I know, I know, I know! It wouldn’t be good for you — it would be good for everyone else.’”
Winfrey said she’s aware that people wish she would speak out more about Trump’s presidency or other things going on, like the #MeToo movement, but Oprah has largely kept herself out of the public discourse.
“I have taken a step back and a couple of notches down,” Oprah said. “I don’t get up and turn on the TV first thing in the morning.”
Instead, she spends quiet time, centers herself, and reads a little bit of news. “I try not to lean into the hysteria,” she said.
After the allegations of rampant sexual abuse by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whom Winfrey has known for decades, Winfrey said she was with some of his accusers.
“I realized they all had a form of PTSD,” Winfrey said of the people she was with as the Weinstein allegations were coming out, adding:
They were saying, ‘Oh, since this thing broke I can’t sleep’ or ‘I’ve been anxious. I just tear up every time I hear another story.’ Having done hundreds of stories about child sexual molestation over the years, I recognized it as the same. The women were having the same reaction that children have when they’ve repressed an experience and they didn’t know whom to tell, felt shame, and thought, ‘I am the only one.’
Winfrey reportedly called Weinstein just after the allegations broke, according to celebrity gossip site TMZ. Winfrey’s spokespeople deny that account, but say she would be willing to do an interview with the former star-maker.
“Oprah has not spoken to Harvey Weinstein directly,” Winfrey’s spokesman toldTMZ. “Someone from his team reached out to her to see if she would talk to him, and she said she would if it was for an interview. There are no plans for an interview at this time.”
This report, by Thomas Phippen, was cross posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
