A video clip of former U.S. President Donald Trump appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 1988 went viral across social media platforms ahead of the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump was running again for the office. When asked if he would ever run for president, Trump stated, "If it [the country] ever got so bad, I wouldn't want to rule it out totally."
A TikTok user posted a clip from the show featuring the alleged quote in December 2023:
In addition to TikTok, that clip spread across other platforms, like X , Facebook , Instagram and Reddit . One X post made in April 2024 amassed more than 187.3 thousand views:
(X user @WinnieSchola)
The clip is authentic, meaning we conclude that it wasn't digitally altered. The popular clip of Trump's appearance on the show originates from a 2015 YouTube video from the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN):
Winfrey brought Trump on as a guest in response to an advertisement he wrote, which had been featured in several popular newspapers at the time. The transcript from the OWN video showed the following:
Winfrey: You took out a full-page ad in major U.S. newspapers last year criticizing US foreign policy. What would you do differently, Donald?
Trump: I'd make our allies pay their fair share. We're a debtor nation, something's going to happen over the next number of years with this country because you can't keep going on losing 200 billion. And yet we let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets. … Kuwait, they live like kings. The poorest person in Kuwait, they live like kings and yet they're not paying. We make it possible for them to sell their oil. Why aren't they paying us 25 percent of what they're making? It's a joke.
After that statement, Winfrey turned the conversation to politics, which prompted Trump to make the comment about running for president (bolding our own):
Winfrey: This sounds like political presidential talk to me and I know people have talked to you about whether or not you want to run. Would you ever?
Trump: Probably not. But I do get tired of seeing the country rip. … I just don't think I really have the inclination to do it I love what I'm doing, but you know I just probably wouldn't do it Oprah. I probably wouldn't, but I do get tired of seeing what's happening with this country and if it got so bad I would never want to rule it out totally.
The clip was featured in another video in 2016 from CNN, in which the news source compared that statement with statements Trump made in 2016:
After examining the transcript in CNN's video, the quote was the same in both. It's clear that this video was not digitally altered and Trump truly did say, "If it [the country] got so bad, I wouldn't want to rule it out totally," when asked if he would consider running for president.
Most Popular
Comments / 0