Former VP Al Gore Cautions American Voters to Take Trump’s ‘Day 1’ Dictator Promises at Face Value

Al Gore went on the record to express his sentiment that a second term for former President Donald Trump could be dictatorial and warned American voters should 'believe' Trump. Gore, who has previously also critiqued Trump for his version of the 2020 election results, outlined what he thinks a second Trump presidency would look like, reported HuffPost. Gore was at CNN's State on the Union's December 10 episode, discussing the climate crisis, when Jake Tapper asked him his opinion of a second Trump presidency. Gore stated, “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.” 

Gore further spoke about the need for action. “The solution to 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.”

Trump's statement to Hannity last week was a reaction to remarks made by former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican who lost her seat to a candidate supported by Trump in the primaries last year after she took part in the House Select Committee investigation into the January 6, 2021, uprising at the US Capitol, reported CNN. In a recent interview, Cheney stated that if Trump were to win the 2024 presidential election, the country would be 'sleepwalking into a dictatorship.' During a speech organized by the New York Young Republican Club, Trump dismissed concerns that he would endanger democracy as 'a hoax.' He said, “We call it now the threat-to-democracy hoax because that’s what it is.”

Apart from discussing Trump's potential second term, Gore told Tapper that he also linked the world's 'mental health crisis' to environmental anxiety. “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.” He continued, “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,” while referring to the move towards sustainability as a 'poly-solution.'

Gore, who lost by a slim margin to Republican President George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential contest, has attacked Trump for his attempts in 2021 to prevent President Joe Biden from entering office following the 2020 election. In a 2021 interview with CNN, he referred to Trump's 'Stop the Steal' plan as 'nonsense.' “He lost by 7 million votes. It wasn’t close, for God’s sake,” Gore said, slamming him. “Apparently, a majority of his party is still so enthralled by 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.”