Oh God, No: Oprah Considers Running for President

I like Oprah. I think she’s a great television host and a good person. She worked hard to build a career in television, and she absolutely deserves every inch of the success she’s found doing it. But please, for the love of god, someone tell her she shouldn’t be the President of the United States.

In case you missed it, Oprah was given the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award at last night’s Golden Globes ceremony, and she gave a really inspiring speech about how sexism and sexual harassment and assault are bad. I agree with her, and she is one of the most inspiring and eloquent speakers of her generation. Well done Oprah, you deserve this accolade and a thousand others.

This led to some jokes about how Oprah should run for president, because all it takes to be president is the ability to give one good 6 minute long speech. Well, okay, you really only even have to do that if you’re a Democrat, our last three Republican presidents were barely literate. Although it turns out that, according to CNN, Oprah is actually considering running for president in 2020.

Oprah Winfrey is “actively thinking” about running for president, two of her close friends told CNN Monday.

The two friends, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, talked in the wake of Winfrey’s extraordinary speech at the Golden Globes Sunday night, which spurred chatter about a 2020 run.

Some of Winfrey’s confidants have been privately urging her to run, the sources said.

One of the sources said these conversations date back several months. The person emphasized that Winfrey has not made up her mind about running.

Here’s the thing everyone excitedly tweeting about how Oprah should be president is forgetting: Oprah can be a spectacularly bad judge of character, and has some very, very stupid beliefs.

Oprah is the person responsible for giving us Doctor Phil McGraw, whom she hired as an advisor the time she was sued for disparaging beef. She started having McGraw on her talk show, and before long, he had his own talk show and media empire. And his show has been allegedly exploiting people’s addictions to make more compelling television by getting addicts drunk and high backstage. Also, he introduced us all to the “Cash Me Ousside” girl, which is even worse.

Then there’s Doctor Mehmet Oz. Aside from being a weirdo who gets sexually aroused by pasta, he regularly dispenses dangerous advice based on pseudoscientific nonsense on his show. He also started as a regular guest on Oprah’s show, and like McGraw, she launched his show, which she co-produces. Oz uses his show to promote things like Reiki, homeopathy, the healing power of crystals, pyramid power, indigo children… any ridiculous bullshit you can find on Gwenyth Paltrow’s website, you can probably find Mehmet Oz lending credibility to.

These are the sorts of people Oprah surrounds herself with and promotes with her platform. That is not the judgement of a person who should president. She’s also an entertainer with no experience in government.

Now, it doesn’t actually take experience or good judgement or restraint or not having barely-concealed Alzheimer’s to be president. Obviously. All you have to do is convince enough people to vote for you and not the other guy. Oprah could probably do that. I’m sure Oprah, like Donald Trump, would be very good at running for president. It’s just that, like Donald Trump, under no circumstances should we actually let her anywhere near the office of the president.