Al Gore thinks people need to take Donald Trump at face value.
The former Vice President explained why preserving democracy is essential to tackling the climate crisis while talking about the 2024 presidential election on CNN’s “State on the Union” on Sunday.
Asked what a third Trump term would mean for the environment and America, Gore told journalist Jake Tapper, “Well, I saw the other day where he pledged to be a dictator on day one. You kind of wonder what it’ll take for people to believe him when he tells us who he is.”
He didn’t seem daunted by the former president’s promise, however.
“The solution to the political despair is political action,” the Democrat went on.
“For those in the Republican party, in the Democratic party and independents who love American democracy and who want to preserve our capacity to govern ourselves and solve our problems, now is the time to get active.”
Gore also connected anxiety about the environment to the global “mental health crisis,” telling Tapper, “I think one of the main reasons for that is that young people look at the fact that we are not yet solving the climate crisis or dealing with some of these other challenges.”
Calling a shift towards sustainability a “poly-solution,” he said, “we know what to do, we have the means to do it, and we have to make sure that we make the right political choices in our democracy to enable ourselves to make the right choices.”
Gore, who narrowly lost his presidential bid to Republican President George W. Bush in 2000, has criticized Trump for his efforts to keep President Joe Biden from taking office after the 2020 election.
He called Trump’s “Stop the Steal” scheme “nonsense” during a 2021 conversation with CNN where he said, “He lost by 7 million votes. It wasn’t close for God’s sake.”
“Apparently a majority of his party is still so enthralled to him that they still believe that the American people did not make the judgment that they clearly made,” Gore went on. “This is very damaging to our democracy.”