Staff Writer
After her acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Jan. 7 Golden Globe Awards, a conversation about a possible presidential run for celebrity philanthropist Oprah Winfrey has ignited.
During his monologue at the beginning of the awards last Sunday night, host Seth Meyers mentioned his joke from a 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner where he said that future President Donald Trump was not qualified for office. The Washington Post reports that on Sunday’s show he joked, “Some have said that night convinced him to run. So, if that’s true, I just want to say: Oprah, you will never be president! You do not have what it takes. And Hanks! Where’s Hanks? You will never be vice president. You are too mean and unrelatable. Now we just wait and see.”
Later in the evening, Winfrey became the first African-American woman to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award and gave an animated speech highlighting both the TIME’S UP and #MeToo movements, both of which were very much part of this year’s Golden Globes.
“So,” Winfrey said, as reported by CNN, “I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that day finally dawns, it will be because a lot of magnificent women and some pretty phenomenal men fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “Me too” again.”
By some, her cry for change was enough to take Meyers’s earlier joke seriously, and the discussion about Winfrey’s presidential prospects begun.
The Washington Post reported that Brad Anderson, the man who ran Obama’s reelection campaign in Iowa in 2012 said, “I can guarantee county chairs in Iowa would love to have a conversation with her. People could be looking for an outsider who could heal the country, and if that’s the case, I have no doubt that Oprah would be powerful.”
With President Trump winning in the 2016 election, a celebrity president could not be unlikely; however, that does not mean others are not wary.
As for Winfrey’s likeliness to run, Gayle King, long-time best friend of Winfrey, told CBS This Morning: “I’m thinking she is not going to be running for president. I do think that she is very intrigued, and I also say, as I’ve heard for many years on the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show,’ you always have the right to change your mind. But that is certainly not something she is considering right now.”
