Oprah Winfrey said she wanted to “bridge the divide in the country" when she conducted a pair of controversial roundtable discussions last month that President Donald Trump slammed as "biased and slanted."
"The first time it was a little awkward, and I could tell there were people who actually didn’t want me sitting next to them. So you know what I did? I leaned in closer," Oprah said on "The Late Show" Tuesday, recalling her "60 Minutes" segment with pro- and anti-Trump voters in Michigan.
“They actually told me later that they thought that I would bring my own political stuff there and that they weren't that happy to see me. That's what they said to me afterwards,” she added.
In her report last month, Oprah moderated a discussion that included an equal mix of Trump supporters and critics from Michigan, a key state he narrowly won on his way to the presidency, but the president said he wasn’t a fan of the event.
“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes,” Trump said in a tweet last month. “The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs [for president] so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”
Read: Oprah Winfrey's full Golden Globes speech Related: Oprah Winfrey says she won't run for president in 2020 Oprah responds after Trump 'hate-tweeted' about '60 Minutes' reportThe veteran journalist continued to stand by the segment on Tuesday, which she said gave her hope.
“I wanted to go to '60 Minutes' because [I wanted] to see what we could do to bridge the divide in the country ... get both sides talking to each other," Winfrey said. "They learned to listen to each other and disagree without being so disagreeable -- which means it can happen."