Former vice president and Harvard alumnus Al Gore used his 2019 Class Day speech at his alma mater to speak out against President Trump.
“Supporters of authoritarianism define loyalty to America’s core principles as treason against its new would-be sovereign,” Gore said, alluding to Trump without mentioning him by name. “This explains the appeal to would-be autocrats of multiple bromances with extreme authoritarians, at least one of whom, in our current time, has been allowed to sink his teeth into America’s democratic electoral process and play with it like a chew toy.”
Gore, 71, has lambasted Trump before. After Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords in 2017, Gore attempted to meet with him to discuss climate change and left angered. Gore said he “tried his best” to explain climate change to Trump but that the president could not be convinced. In an interview with “Good Day L.A.” last August, Gore said that his message to the administration would be to resign.
Gore has often attacked Republicans after he conceded the 2000 election after a drawn-out recount. He delivered a fiery speech at New York University in 2004 and rattled off a list of Bush administration officials who he thought should resign. After the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Gore accused the Bush administration of fostering a “culture of impunity” that made war crimes “logical and inevitable.”
