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Well, this is awkward.
After Federal Election Commission filings showed that the Harris-Walz campaign paid a cool million to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions company for the town hall where Oprah endorsed Harris, Oprah denied it.
Caught on a backstreet by one of those TMZ video crews and asked if it was true that « they paid you a million dollars for the endorsement for Kamala », Oprah replied, « Not true. I was paid nothing, ever. »
“The campaign paid for the production costs of ‘Unite for America,’ a live-streaming event that took place Sept. 19 outside Detroit, Mich.,” a spokesperson for Harpo said, trying to clear things up. “Oprah Winfrey was at no point during the campaign paid a personal fee, nor did she receive a fee from Harpo.”
Technically, that’s the truth. But only technically.
It was Winfrey’s production company that received the seven-figure check. But Harpo is owned by Winfrey. For all intents and purposes, Harpo IS Oprah.
The FEC paperwork shows that Harpo was paid for « EVENT PRODUCTION », not for Winfrey’s endorsement. But does 94 minutes of unscripted, live television, produced on a small set, really cost a million dollars to produce? Or was Oprah’s « personal fee » just part of the overhead?
« As a legal matter », the Federalist’s Sean Davis asked on Monday, « how are secret bought-and-paid-for endorsements even legal? If you can’t run a paid ad without a clear disclosure, how on earth can you run a paid endorsement without disclosure? »
Maybe that’s something the Trump DOJ should look into.
