Oprah Winfrey’s 60 Minutes debut tonight might seem just a wee bit behind the news cycle, what with Donald Trump having gone to war with virtually the entire NFL over the weekend. Trump presidentially urged team owners to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now” if any more players kneel in protest during pre-game National Anthem singing. Many in The NFL responded Sunday: “Nuts to you, Mr. President.”
Following Sunday’s massive National Anthem-kneeling during various games – heck, even Trump’s BFF Tom Brady locked arms with teammates in solidarity during anthem singing – Oprah’s 60 Minutes unveiling aired.
Winfrey’s pre-taped season-debut segment sees her focus-grouping in Michigan, to determine IF the country’s “divide was still as deep and bitter” as it had been during last year’s presidential election.
Don’t they get cable news in Montecito?
Oprah’s focus group includes a farmer, a drug counselor, a speech therapist, a former GM factory worker and a sales manager.
She kicks things off asking “How do you think Donald Trump is doing as president of the United States today?” She picked “Tom” to get the ball rolling. And if you guessed Tom responded “I love it. Every day I love him more and more” – congratulations!
“I still don’t like his attacks, his twitter attacks on other politicians,” Tom acknowledges. “But, at the same time, his actions speak louder than words. And I love what he’s doing to this country.”
Jennifer, on the other hand, pronounces Trump “a horrible president.”
“When he’s on teleprompter, he’s sane,” Jennifer concedes. “I’m like, ‘That’s great. That’s great. That’s a good message.’ But when he’s off teleprompter…it makes me feel sick to my stomach. We look like we’re a joke to other foreign leaders. It’s an embarrassment.”
Tim agrees, as does Wesley, and Lauren. Matt, however, is of the Tom camp, saying “We wanted somebody to go in and flip tables.”
The Real Housewives reference intrigues Oprah, who asks Matt to describe the table.
“Every time he does a rally or a tweet, he’s speaking for people that are sitting at home in Iowa or Oklahoma or Montana, that just want to say it that way,” Matt explains. “For years we asked for a president who would just say it the way we do. We got that.”
As the sit-down with Oprah continues, strong words were exchanged on Charlottesville, Russian election tampering, and Obamacare killing. Oprah rules as to whether the country still was as deeply and bitterly divided – no spoiling here. On the bright side, she reports some members of her focus group have kept talking since their recorded conversation, online and in person. Just last week, she says, five of them got together again to try to understand each other’s views on gun control – at a shooting range.
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