Former Vice President Al Gore looks on during the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. In an interview this week, Gore leveled harsh criticism at the Trump administration’s handling of the escalating crisis with Iran.Markus Schreiber/AP
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Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a blistering rebuke of President Trump’s war on Iran this week in his first wide-ranging comments on the escalating crisis, calling Trump’s lack of planning “an astonishing mistake” born of arrogance and corruption. “I never would have believed that any president would do even one-tenth of the atrocious things Donald Trump has done,” he said.
In an exclusive sit-down with Reveal host Al Letson for an upcoming episode of More To The Story, a visibly angered Gore linked the war to Trump’s climate recalcitrance and a slew of broken promises.
As the Pentagon prepared to send about 2,000 paratroopers to Iran, Gore argued that the president had brushed aside decades of war planning for just such a scenario. The energy crisis unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz has “been the number one question for all the war games and plans for 50 years almost,” Gore told Letson. “President Trump said, ‘Don’t worry about it. They’ll surrender before that comes into play.’ Well, that was an astonishing mistake of the kind that you really do not want the president of your country to make because it has put us in a terrible situation.”
“Could he be just as wrong about that as he has been in attacking Iran without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz?” Gore added. “Could he be just as wrong about that as he was when he threatened to invade Greenland?”
Elsewhere in the interview, Gore launched another broadside against a series of back flips and failed promises from the president: “He told us prices were going to come down. He told us we would not get into any more foreign ‘forever wars.’ He told us inflation was going to subside. He told us the economy was going to really boom. None of those things have come true.”
“This is the most corrupt administration.”
“This is the most corrupt administration, not only in American history, but more corrupt than I could ever have imagined a president would be able to get away with to the extent that he has,” Gore said. “It’s shocking to me.”
This is one clip from a series we’ll be posting in the coming days, ahead of our longer interview with the former Vice President soon, in which he discusses climate action, religion, and what’s giving him hope. Stay tuned.
And in the meantime, subscribe to Reveal on Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss the latest.
