CULTURE

Oprah Takes the High Road In Response to Donald Trump’s Tweet About Her Interview Skills: “I Don’t Like Giving Negativity Power”

After Trump tweeted that Oprah was “insecure” and “biased,” she cleared up the facts on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.


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Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Another day, another Twitter feud for Donald Trump; but this time he’s beefing with the queen of all media.

It all began on Sunday night, when Oprah Winfrey appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes to interview voters on both sides of the political aisle in Michigan, a state Donald Trump won during the 2016 election.

The panel in Oprah’s 60 Minutes segment consisted of seven voters who support Trump and seven voters who do not that Oprah interviewed last fall. The voters had kept in touch with one another despite their diametrically opposed political positions and were asked to return for a followup roundtable discussion.

Trump tweeted about his disdain with the interview, calling the questions “biased and slanted” and full of “incorrect” facts. In the same tweet, he called Oprah “insecure” and also egged her on to run for president, saying, “Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”

The general public weren’t the only ones left perplexed by Trump’s screed against Oprah and her CBS segment. While Oprah took the high road by not responding directly to Trump on Twitter, on Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show she brushed off Trump’s nonsensical tweet. “I don’t like giving negativity power, so I just thought, ‘What?'” she said when asked what she thought of Trump’s criticism of her 60 Minutes segment and dare to run for office.

Oprah also explained to Ellen DeGeneres that she did her due diligence as a journalist, and called the segment producers after re-watching every tape of her interview with the panel of Michigan voters. She also described the critique and fact checking process each 60 Minutes segment must go through in order to ensure a balanced representation of interview questions and responses from interviewees. “When I had asked the question, ‘Do you care about what other people think about America?’ they only used the Democratic side,” she said. “I remembered the guy Matt had said, ‘No. We’re the only people who are worried what other countries are thinking of us.’ And I said, ‘I think you should go back and put that in because it makes it more balanced.’ So, I was working very hard to do the opposite of what I was hate-tweeted about, [but] it’s OK.”

As for the dare to run for office, Oprah already gave her final word on the topic back in January when she told InStyle that she has no interest in running for President in 2020, and that’s a fact.

Related: No, Oprah Is Not Running for President in 2020