By Ayo Kehinde
Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey who invited speculation that she may run for the 2020 presidential elections after she delivered a powerful speech at the Golden Globes awards gala, January 7, has turned her back on many who had gone further to kick-start campaigns by designing gift items on her behalf. She killed the speculation in a magazine interview published Thursday. She said that running for office was not in her nature.
“I met with someone the other day who said that they would help me with a campaign. That’s not for me,” she told fashion magazine InStyle. “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.”
Interest in the media mogul surged among her teeming fans across the racial barriers in the country and members of the opposition Democratic Party after her January 7 speech where Winfrey accepted a lifetime achievement award. Analysts picked on keys words in the speech asking women to stand and be counted, and the need for her compatriots to be united in the face of the current mood of despair occasioned by the Trump administration’s policies. The media took up the story and began to spun reports in the days that followed suggesting she might be considering a run.
President Donald Trump, himself a former reality television star, said on January 9 that he doubted Winfrey would be a candidate.
“I like Oprah. I don’t think she is going to run,” Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting at the White House. And then went on to boost that he would beat her anytime, if she took up the challenge.
But she had debunked all that in the InStyle interview. She described having recently seen a “cute” coffee mug emblazoned with “Oprah 2020.”
“All you need is a mug and some campaign literature and a T-shirt,” Winfrey said.
