Trump Baits Oprah: Run Against Me and Be Defeated!

Hype about Oprah Winfrey potentially running for president in 2020 surged to a ludicrous zenith for a few days after her speech at the Golden Globes and then quickly burnt itself out after some of the smarter members of the liberal left thought to themselves: Uh, really? Oprah? And then Oprah herself put the fire out entirely when she announced that she had no interest in obtaining the Democratic nomination and making a run for it against Donald Trump.

But there’s at least one person who would still like to see Miss Winfrey take a shot at the White House: Trump himself. After watching the former talk show queen hosting a politics panel on 60 Minutes on Sunday, the president goaded her into possibly changing her mind.

“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes,” Trump wrote. “The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”

On the subject of Oprah’s questions, the president was certainly not stretching the truth. In the segment, which had Oprah speaking to voters on both sides of the partisan divide, she lobbed anti-Trump question after anti-Trump question at the panel.

“Who here believes that he made the comment about ‘shithole countries’?” she asked. “Polls are showing that respect for the United States is eroding around the world – do you care what the world thinks of the United States?”

And on and on in that fashion.

Trump may be confident that he could easily destroy Oprah in a general election, but we’re not so sure. Blogging Democrats may want someone more “serious” to secure the nomination, but if we were a liberal site that wanted to win at all costs, we would think twice about spurning the Oprah option. Not saying she would be a good president, even from a liberal perspective, but her name recognition and popularity is a force to be reckoned with. A showdown between Oprah and Trump would shatter the engagement records on television and in the general media, and we wouldn’t be surprised if she generated MUCH greater voter turnout than Hillary. Don’t underestimate the power of celebrity, especially one as widely respected as Oprah.

This is one fight Trump may be better off not picking.