Marianne Williamson officially announced her 2024 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination at Union Station in Washington D.C. on Saturday.
“I, as of today, am a candidate for the office of president of the United States,” she announced.
President Joe Biden hasn’t made an official announcement, though it’s been suggested he will soon, about running for reelection, but Williamson took veiled digs at the current administration at the beginning of her speech.
“It’s not like we don’t have the solutions,” she said. “There are people in this town who have the solutions. There are people all over this country who have the solutions, but the people who are in power do not have the solutions or do not deeply support the solutions and people who do have the solutions do not have the power. Once again, let the people get in there, we’ll handle it from here.”
Part of Williamson’s speech was aired by CNN. In the fiery clip, she name-checked everything from slavery to the women’s suffrage movement.
“We responded to slavery with abolition. We responded to the institutionalized suppression of women with the women’s suffrage movement. We responded to the gilded age with the establishment of the labor movement and the new deal. We responded to segregation with the civil rights movement and it is our turn now,” she said.
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Williamson said:
“The reason we have such a problem today is because it is not one specific institution that plagues us and that opposes real democracy and that opposes the equality of people and of economic justice, that opposes the very principles on which we stand. It’s not one institution this time. It’s like an atomizer spray of economic injustice. It is over here. It’s Flint, Michigan over here and it’s waters drying up and aquifers and rivers drying up in the American south over here, it’s mass incarceration over there, it’s 68,000 people who die every year from lack of healthcare over here.”
Williamson made a name for herself as a self help author and Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual advisor. She previously confirmed her intention to put together another long shot campaign last month.
In a recent interview with Good Morning New Hampshire, Williamson applauded Biden for doing a “good job” taking on Republicans, but said it’s time to “move on.”
Watch above via CNN.