The Hollywood Reporter asked Oprah Winfrey if she could beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and she took that opportunity to shut down any talk of her candidacy.
“I don’t the answer to that,” she said of the can-she-beat-him question. “But I’ll never have to know the answer to that, because I will never run for public office.”
She added in the hourlong podcast: “I will never run for public office. That’s a pretty definitive thing.”
Labeled “possibly the most famous living woman and person of color and certainly the most famous interviewer and life coach of the television age,” the 63-year-old exec told THR: “I learned early on, in the process of interviewing other people, that what really connects you to another human being is your willingness to open up and be vulnerable.
“Before people researched it and studied it, I had come to know that naturally, that vulnerability is your greatest power, and I would say that that’s been my greatest gift in connecting to the audience, just being open and willing to continually be myself.”
But starting out, she tried to be another network star, she said.
“I just pretended to be Barbara Walters,” Winfrey said.
“Winfrey became a first-rate student, won oratory contests and beauty pageants and caught a big break when she was just 16 and landed her first job in journalism, reading news for a local radio station,” THR sad.