Written By: Rudy Malcom, Intern Writer
“I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon!” Oprah Winfrey declared on January 7, 2018, at the Golden Globe Awards. She was accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a life achievement honor presented annually to the recipient who has made “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” but her powerful speech about sexual abuse led many viewers to speculate that she would run against Donald Trump for President in 2020. Might the Democratic Party bring forward its own celebrity for The Republic’s highest executive office?
Although Oprah will not be fulfilling this popular wish, Steve Bannon, who formerly served as the alt-right Breitbart News’ executive chairman and the Trump administration’s White House Chief Strategist, described her on July 18 as Trump’s biggest potential foe in the 2020 presidential election. (It’s ironic that, in a 1999 interview with Larry King, Trump named Oprah as his “first choice” for a running mate should he ever run for President.)
“I think we’re in a different era,” Bannon said. “I think we’re in an era that media and understanding media and understanding how to communicate on a mass basis to the American people is so much more important than being in a state legislat[ure].”
Each the other’s foil, Trump and media mogul Oprah, according to Vox staff writer Constance Grady, symbolize “two poles of the fantasy of the celebrity president, one of America’s favorite daydreams.” Trump evokes “rage and resentment,” Oprah “wisdom and kindness and empathy.” Whereas he is “the product of intergenerational failsonry [sic] & legitimately rich,” she is “black, a woman, unabashed, loved, genuinely self-made” — “the anti-Trump,” tweeted Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. Whereas Trump personifies “the reality–tinged understanding of the American dream” that it’s “not actual hard work that makes you successful, but the ability to evince the feeling and effect of power and wealth,” BuzzFeed observed, Oprah has “made the American Dream seem increasingly attainable,” wrote author Nicole Aschoff. “When we fantasize about electing a celebrity for president,” Grady illuminates, “we’re not imagining that Oprah is secretly a brilliant legislator... We’re imagining that the perfect, untouchable, and morally righteous figure of our dreams can stride straight off the screen into the White House and make everything better” — that a celebrity savior can make America great again.
Although Oprah will not be fulfilling this popular wish, Steve Bannon, who formerly served as the alt-right Breitbart News’ executive chairman and the Trump administration’s White House Chief Strategist, described her on July 18 as Trump’s biggest potential foe in the 2020 presidential election. (It’s ironic that, in a 1999 interview with Larry King, Trump named Oprah as his “first choice” for a running mate should he ever run for President.)
“I think we’re in a different era,” Bannon said. “I think we’re in an era that media and understanding media and understanding how to communicate on a mass basis to the American people is so much more important than being in a state legislat[ure].”
Each the other’s foil, Trump and media mogul Oprah, according to Vox staff writer Constance Grady, symbolize “two poles of the fantasy of the celebrity president, one of America’s favorite daydreams.” Trump evokes “rage and resentment,” Oprah “wisdom and kindness and empathy.” Whereas he is “the product of intergenerational failsonry [sic] & legitimately rich,” she is “black, a woman, unabashed, loved, genuinely self-made” — “the anti-Trump,” tweeted Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. Whereas Trump personifies “the reality–tinged understanding of the American dream” that it’s “not actual hard work that makes you successful, but the ability to evince the feeling and effect of power and wealth,” BuzzFeed observed, Oprah has “made the American Dream seem increasingly attainable,” wrote author Nicole Aschoff. “When we fantasize about electing a celebrity for president,” Grady illuminates, “we’re not imagining that Oprah is secretly a brilliant legislator... We’re imagining that the perfect, untouchable, and morally righteous figure of our dreams can stride straight off the screen into the White House and make everything better” — that a celebrity savior can make America great again.
