Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire who enjoys splurging on luxury trips and expensive gifts for all of her friends. Therefore, she left fans shocked and confused after learning about a man’s $100 gift budget.
In a video shared on Dec. 18 by Colin Drummond, also known as TikTok user @10gsocial, an unidentified voice asked the media mogul to suggest a gift for his mother. He said she was “not doing well” and wrote over the 38-second clip, “Oprah Just Slayed Mom Christmas Gifts.”
Oprah recommended he buy a jewelry box from her annual “Favorite Things” list of holiday gifts. “You know a wonderful thing is that jewelry box…that I had on ‘Favorite Things.’ A beautiful red jewelry box,” she said before the man interrupted saying, “That’s too expensive for me.”
The 68-year-old insisted the jewelry box was only $100, but he asked for a more affordable and “sentimental” option.
“Lower than $100?” said the confused TV personality. “Ok, then, this is the perfect gift for your mom. You do a list of your top ten reasons why you love her, and you make a beautiful card, and it’s your top ten.”
Fans in the comments section of the video were shocked and stunned at Oprah’s response. Some felt she insinuated the man was “poor” and others felt she gave the perfect answer for someone in her tax bracket.
“She said, ‘Oh you poor? I got a better gift for you.”
“Oprah is a billionaire but she gave a gift suggestion that’s $100…but y’all saying she’s out of touch lol.”
“I think Oprah handled this and answered this very well.”
One hundred dollars might be a small price for Oprah, the talk show host with a net worth of $2.5 billion, as reported by Forbes. Her media and business empire began forming with her start on national television nearly four decades aggo. She received a number of accolades and Emmy awards for hosting “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which ran from 1986 to 2011. The serial entrepreneur expanded her multi-billion dollar empire to launch “O, The Oprah Magazine,” OWN network, and her online site, Oprah Daily. She also founded Harpo Productions, which is her name spelled backwards. It’s also the name of her on-screen husband in the 1985 film “The Color Purple.”
In an October report, Forbes received backlash for declaring Oprah and several other billionaires were “too poor” to make the 2022 Forbes 400 List of Richest Americans.
“There’s rich, then there’s #Forbes400 rich,” wrote the business magazine in a Sept. 27 Instagram post. “It takes $2.7 billion to qualify for this year’s ranking of America’s wealthiest people. That’s down from $2.9 billion last year, but still a far cry from just a decade ago, when the cutoff for this elite group was just $1.1 billion.”
The outlet continued, “That leaves plenty of famous faces behind. Oprah Winfrey (estimated net worth, $2.5 billion) is too poor. Kanye West ($2 billion) doesn’t have enough. Neither do Kim Kardashian ($1.8 billion), Michael Jordan ($1.7 billion), Peter Jackson ($1.5 billion) or Jay-Z ($1.3 billion).”
