Oprah on letter she wrote praising Trump: 'I'm not thinking it today'

Decades ago, billionaire celebrity Oprah Winfrey casually wrote to Donald Trump that the two would make a great ticket for president – a letter Trump is planning to publish in a coffee table book being published later this year.

But Oprah's mind has most certainly been changed, she told CBS News on Tuesday.

"Letters to Trump," a book full of private correspondences written to the former president by various politicians and celebrities including former presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, Princess Diana and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, is expected to hit the stores priced at $99.

"She wrote at the time, 'Too bad we're not running for office,' according to Axios. 'What a TEAM!'"

But on "CBS Mornings," Winfrey said, "'I think he'd written a book and said that he wanted me to be his running mate ... if he decided to run, and when I heard that this letter is now going to be a part of a book, I thought, 'Oh, wasn't that nice of me to write a note.'

"That's what I thought, because I'm always like, 'Oh, I should write a note. The person did this, or I should write a note,'' she said. 'So I'm really happy that I wrote a note.'"

But her sentiment that they could work together has vanished, Winfrey added to CBS host Gayle King. "I might have thought it back then. I might have thought it 23 years ago," she said. "I'm not thinking it today."

Winfrey's letter was written in 2000, just after Trump's first ill-fated campaign for president under the Reform Party in 1999. Running alongside former wrestler turned Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, Trump campaigned on a platform that included eliminating the national debt, adopting universal health care, and trade reform. He ended the campaign amid dysfunction and infighting within the Reform Party.

Ironically, Winfrey herself later became the focus of rumors she would challenge Trump for the presidency in 2020, although she never mounted a campaign and publicly stated she had no interest in entering politics.