Oprah Winfrey Is “Not Even Thinking” About Running for President, According to Gayle King
“I do think she is intrigued by the idea… I don’t think at this point she’s actually considering it.”
Even before Oprah Winfrey‘s rousing Golden Globes acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award, there were rumors that the media mogul was contemplating running for president. You may recall that in March of 2017, during a conversation on Bloomberg’s The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations, Oprah told the billionaire that Donald Trump’s presidential election was eye-opening for her. “I thought, ‘Oh gee, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know enough,” she said, according to CNN. “And now I’m thinking, ‘Oh! Oh.'” Now, however, after the same rumor swirled once again the wake of her appearance at the awards show, Gayle King, Oprah’s BFF and O editor-at-large, has denied that the beloved icon is seriously considering running for president in the 2020 election.
“I did not think they would be talking about it in presidential terms,” King said on CBS This Morning of Oprah’s speech, as People notes. “I thought that they would be talking about it because it was powerful. She wasn’t writing this thinking, ‘I’m going to launch my presidential campaign,’ which, by the way, she’s not even thinking about having a presidential campaign. She wasn’t thinking in those terms. I thought they’d be talking about it because I knew it was going to be good.”
In fact, King says that Oprah didn’t even intend for her speech to be “political.” “She wanted it to be a uniting speech,” King said. She later elaborated, telling People, “I was her practice audience. She had read it to me for time, but it was the type of thing where she knew she had a message to deliver. It was very important for her because it would be the first time people heard from her in any detail about the Me Too movement. So she knew that she wanted to say something significant… Her whole thing going into it was, ‘I just want to meet the moment because I know it’s going to be a big moment.’ Not necessarily for her, but she wanted that to resonate. And she just knocked it out of the park, as she does.”
Still, if it’s possible for a former reality TV star with zero political experience to become president of the United States, surely it’s possible for Oprah to change her mind. King confirmed as much on CTM, saying, “I was up talking to her very late last night. I do think she is intrigued by the idea, I do think that. I also know that after years of watching The Oprah Winfrey Show, you always have the right to change your mind. I don’t think at this point she’s actually considering it.”
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Related: Oprah on Running For President: “Now, I’m Thinking ‘Oh!'”
