When Oprah Winfrey Said That She Will Run Against Trump in 2020 by Teaming up With Mitt Romney

According to McKay Coppins, the author of Romney: A Reckoning, Oprah Winfrey allegedly recommended Sen. Mitt Romney join her on a unity presidential ticket to stop Donald Trump from being reelected in 2020. The book is based on hours of in-depth interviews with the senator from Utah, who lost the 2012 presidential race to Democratic President Barack Obama. In an excerpt from the book leaked by Axios, an insider acquainted with the author's draft, Coppins describes a meeting with Romney during which the senator recalls Winfrey contacting him with the concept of a ticket "to save the country."

Coppins' book stated that Winfrey, who had previously endorsed prominent Democratic candidates, believed that having a Republican lawmaker on the ticket with her would be a show of unity because they could work together to defeat incumbent candidate Trump in 2020. However, last year a spokesperson for Winfrey clarified to Axios, "In November 2019, Ms. Winfrey called Senator Romney to encourage him to run on an Independent ticket. She was not calling to be part of the ticket and was never considering running herself." Coppins's book drew on hours of interviews with Romney in addition to correspondence, texts, and notebooks the senator had been keeping for a possible biography. Romney claimed that after realizing he couldn't write objectively about himself, he decided to have a journalist write about him instead.

According to The New York Times, Winfrey informed Ann Romney, Mitt's wife, over the phone in 2019 that Michael Bloomberg had contacted her about supporting his presidential candidacy and that she needed to ascertain Mitt's interest before making a decision. Winfrey said that she was "certain" Elizabeth Warren could not defeat Trump and that she questioned either Pete Buttigieg or Joseph R. Biden Jr. In response, Ann said that her husband would neither be a Republican nor an independent candidate for president in 2020. When Winfrey interviewed Mitt in New Hampshire during his presidential campaign in 2012, she got to know the Romney family. According to the book, she had a "special fondness" for Ann Romney.

Winfrey has sometimes been brought up as a possible contender for the presidency. Some were urging her to run in 2018 after she made an impassioned statement at the Golden Globes. Nevertheless, she said on 60 Minutes Overtime that she will not run for office in 2020. She said, "I had a lot of wealthy men calling, telling me that they would run my campaign and raise $1 billion for me. I am actually humbled by the fact that people think that I could be a leader of the free world, but it’s just not in my spirit. It’s not in my DNA." Over a month before this report came out, Romney said he would not run for reelection in 2024, citing his desire to create room for a "new generation of leaders". He made the strong recommendation that both President Biden and Trump resign as well, claiming that neither was successfully leading his party to take on the "critical challenges" that the country confronts.