President Trump told Oprah Winfrey in 1988 that he wouldn’t rule out a run for president, decades before reports that Winfrey may consider a run against Trump in 2020.
Winfrey accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, and onlookers thought Winfrey’s acceptance speech foreshadowed a White House run. Stedman Graham, Winfrey’s longtime partner, told the Los Angeles Times that Winfrey “would absolutely do it.”
In her 1988 interview with Trump, Winfrey asked if he would ever run for president. Trump initially said he didn’t “have the inclination to do it,” but said he wouldn’t definitively be against it.
“But I do get tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, and if it got so bad, I probably wouldn’t want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, how we’re really making other people live like kings, and we’re not,” he said.
Trump said he felt confident that if he did ever run for president, as he would in 2016, he would win.
“If I did decide to do it, I think I’d be inclined, I would say that I would have a hell of a chance of winning,” Trump said.
