Ivanka Trump will meet with former Vice President Al Gore at Trump Tower on Monday to discuss climate issues, Trump transition officials told reporters.
The president-elect’s eldest daughter helped shape his child care policy plan during his campaign and has continued to advise him during the transition process. However, she and her brothers are expected to take over Trump’s business empire in the coming weeks as the incoming Republican president has promised to separate himself from his private business ventures to “fully focus on running the country.”
It was not clear whether Gore initiated the meeting with Ivanka, and transition officials declined to provide details on what the duo hoped to discuss beyond “climate issues.” However, a source close to Trump told Politico last week the 35-year-old mother of three hopes to make climate change one of her signature issues during her father’s presidency.
Trump has previously called climate change a hoax “created for and by the Chinese” and promised to dismantle many of President Obama’s ambitious climate policies.
Trump reportedly urged the Nobel committee to strip Gore, a leading climate change activist, of his Nobel Peace Prize after a record snowstorm on the East Coast in 2010. Gore retaliated by campaigning hard against Trump and alongside Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in the final months of the election, during which he heavily promoted the Paris Climate Agreement and billed climate change as a top threat the U.S. faces.
“[Trump] has said some things on the climate crisis that I think should concern everyone,” Gore said in a radio interview in May.
More recently, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has expressed hope that Trump might reevaluate his skepticism and reverse the promise he made to terminate much of the Obama administration’s work on climate change. Gore also encouraged Obama and Clinton to get involved in the call for climate action during a recent interview with The Guardian.
“I would hope they do get involved. They both have the right positions on climate change and in his second term president Obama did a really excellent job in highlighting the climate crisis,” he said.
Transition officials said Gore has no plans to meet with the president-elect at this time despite the sit-down with his daughter. Trump told The New York Times last month that he is keeping “an open mind” about the Paris climate accord, marking a departure from his previous comments about cancelling the deal on the campaign trail.
