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'Amazing' Oprah Winfrey could beat Donald Trump if she were to run for office, claims Tina Brown

Tina Brown speaking to the Telegraph's Allison Pearson at Women Mean Business Live 2019 - PAUL GROVER FOR THO TELEGRAPH
Tina Brown speaking to the Telegraph's Allison Pearson at Women Mean Business Live 2019 - PAUL GROVER FOR THO TELEGRAPH

Tina Brown has said Oprah Winfrey could beat Donald Trump if she were to run for office.

Speaking at the Telegraph's Women Mean Business Live event, Brown, a former doyenne of the magazine world, said Winfrey was a "brilliant business executive" who has the business savvy and personality to lead the country.

Brown, 65, now runs her own media company and is the founder of Women in the World, an organisation which brings together female leaders and activists.

She said Winfrey was, simply: "on it". "You can always tell dealing with people what they're like as an executive. She is amazing. She made a fortune from nothing and is a hugely talented executive. She just doesn't want to do it to her life."

In a live interview with Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, Brown said of her adoptive country that though women like Winfrey and Michelle Obama - who she described as "just a big warm force" - could both beat Trump if they ran against him, she thought the first female president was unlikely to be a democrat.

Oprah Winfrey - Credit: REUTERS
Credit: REUTERS

"America is so huge. It's too big, it needs editing. It's this big huge place and every state is so different. I think the first woman president will be a Republican."

Brown described former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as "the single most trashed woman in the human race".

"I don't know how she gets up in the morning with how much abuse she has taken. Trump still has people at his rallies chanting 'lock her up'.

"They wanted to squash her and it worked. I think we all underestimated how much 10 years of the apprentice was on Trump's side.

She spoke of the "slumbering misogyny" which had been brought about by the Trump era. She said: "He pushed all those misogynist buttons to the point that it was breathtaking."

Speaking of her own career, Brown said one of the most trying episodes was the three years she spent working for Harvey Weinstein after she left Vanity Fair.

Harvey Weinstein - Credit: AP
Tina Brown spent three years working for Harvey Weinstein, who she described as 'a raging bull lunatic' Credit: AP

She described the disgraced movie mogul as "a raging bull lunatic".

"Harvey never sexually accosted me - with him it was all about power and I was the boss so he couldn't threaten me.

"Plus by that time I was like 49, 50,so I was very much not on his mind."

Brown said she was taken aback by "how much he destabilised me".

"Confronting someone who is such a bully is very demoralising. I'd been used to a very polite world. I'd never been spoken to like that in my life."

Describing her first meeting at Miramax, Brown recalled being struck by how "seedy and shabby it all was". "We sat on this sofa on where I later discovered all kinds of degradation had gone on."

She added: "I learnt a lot from him, despite all the horrors."

Follow along with our Women Mean Business 2019 live blog coverage here.

Read all about the Telegraph's Women Mean Business campaign, which aims to to close the funding gap facing female entrepreneurs.