Former talk show host and motivational speaker Oprah Winfrey has finally explained why she is refusing to run for president, telling Vogue that doing so “would kill me.”
After a presidential-sounding speech she gave at the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey fielded many a call to run in the 2020 election, challenging sitting president Donald Trump.
Placing the blame on the incompatibility of her personality and the dirty nature of politics, Winfrey said she felt like she couldn’t live “in that political structure — all the non-truths, the bullshit, the crap, the nastiness, the backhanded backroom stuff that goes on.”
Winfrey’s plan, instead, is to focus on continuing her work in the anti-sexual assault movements of Time’s Up and #MeToo, forwarding her stated goal of “shifting the paradigm.” Even with the media onslaught of reported sexual harassment, Winfrey said she doesn’t see that we live in “dark times.”
“I see, ‘Isn’t this remarkable that we’re waking up?’ For years, women have endured craziness,” Winfrey said in the interview. “This is what’s happening to people. They’re allowing themselves to not just become corroded, but to become hysterical. You’ve got to lean to the happiness.”
Winfrey’s refusal to run in the presidential election may come as a disappointment to President Trump, who said in March that he’d “love Oprah to win” the Democratic primary.
“I’d love to beat Oprah. I know her weakness,” Trump said during a speech.
