I have not held back in my criticism of Trump, but fair is fair when it comes to reporting facts – I’m not saying this is particularly significant, but it did happen:
Former vice-president Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against climate change, and Donald Trump, who at one point called it a hoax, met on Monday in what Gore called a “productive” session. Gore, a Democrat, spent about 90 minutes in meetings at the president-elect’s Trump Tower apartment and office building in Manhattan.
… “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground,” Gore told reporters, adding, “I found it an extremely interesting conversation and, to be continued.”
Also of related interest in the same article …
In a possibly related matter, Trump is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Rex Tillerson, the head of Exxon Mobil Corp. who possibly is being considered for the job of secretary of state in the Trump administration … Exxon Mobil has embraced the 2015 Paris Agreement that would lower global greenhouse gas emissions by between 26 per cent and 28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2025.
Tillerson may be the head of Exxon and no environmentalist’s friend, but he is miles ahead of the troglodyte Lee Raymond who used to be chairman and CEO and was responsible during his tenure for Exxon’s financing of some of the worst climate change denial lobbyists and astroturf propagandizers, a practice that Exxon has substantially scaled down under Tillerson.
I would be amazed but certainly gratified if Gore himself is appointed to a significant post.
Ambassador to Outer Mongolia? This was a meeting set up by Ivanka that Donald crashed. I think the best hope is that Ivanka has some influence on her father on this issue. I can’t see Gore playing any significant role in the Trump administration. If he does, then I’ll sign on to the hypothesis that Trump is a true genius and has pulled the wool over all of our eyes as he leads us into a progressive future that only Bernie Sanders could envision.
ETA: Shalmanese: That does seem to be the way things work with him, doesn’t it?
It would be hilarious if Gore and Obama have a secret direct line to Trump, and call him at regular intervals. It would drive those folks who think they are going to run Trump absolutely wild!
** “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground”**
Notice the very careful wording here-he isn’t saying that Trump was participating in this search for common ground, only that a search was going on.
Gore is just political air kissing. Trump wants to get tight with a guy like Tillerson but I don’t know anything about him. I would assume Tillerson sees the opportunity to exploit more oil resources under some new marketing approach that makes Exxon look like it’s growing the economy instead of polluting the world.
I know Trump is not in the White House yet, but I wonder how much news and or tweets will be forth coming from Trump Tower after he is a resident of the White House?
Did you see that cartoon of the White House with tweets coming out of it and a reporter in front of the white house saying, “I miss the good ole press conference days”
I certainly hope Gore showered afterward. For the good of humanity he may have pleaded with the orange buffoon about the need to curb global warming but I’m sure it went in one ear, met no resistance, and went out the other.
I suppose I was trying to find a silver lining in what is otherwise a total fiasco, considering that virtually everyone he’s appointed to anything so far has been a complete incompetent and spectacularly unsuited to the job, with the possible exception of Mattis for SecDef.
I thought it was encouraging that he was seeking advice from Gore, but as John Mace suggested, according to some sources at least, the meeting was Ivanka’s idea. I guess we’ll just have to see. The critical factors for the future are whether the US stays in the Paris climate accord which he earlier threatened to pull out of and the trajectory of future climate regulation, which doesn’t look good considering the climate change denier he’s appointed to the EPA. It’s astounding that there’s even a discussion about whether US government policy is going to be guided by well established science, or whether it’s going to be guided by ignorant right-wing fantasies and outright denial of facts.