'Power-seeking': Former VP says Trump mirrors 'populist authoritarian leaders'

22 April

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Long known for his aggressive support of environmentalism, former Vice President Al Gore was vehemently critical of the Trump Administration's environmental record during a Monday, April 21 speech in San Francisco.

The speech came at the beginning of the city's Climate Week, and Gore compared the Trump Administration's use of disinformation to the disinformation tactics used by Adolf Hitler's far-right government in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and early 1940s.

Gore, according to Politico's Debra Khan, told the crowd, "I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil."

Recalling what Germany philosophers had to say about the Third Reich, Gore explained, "It was (Jürgen) Habermas' mentor, Theodore Adorno, who wrote that the first step in that nation’s descent into hell was — and I quote — 'the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.' He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, 'attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.' End quote. The Trump Administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality.'"

During the speech, Gore noted some of President Donald Trump's debunked claims about the environment.

The former vice president and 2000 Democratic presidential nominee told attendees, "They say the climate crisis is a hoax invented by the Chinese to destroy American manufacturing. They say coal is clean. They say wind turbines cause cancer. They say sea-level rise just creates more beachfront property."

Gore, according to Khan, also accused Trump of scapegoating immigrants.

Gore told the San Francisco crowd, "We've already seen, by the way, how populist authoritarian leaders have used migrants as scapegoats and have fanned the fires of xenophobia to fuel their own rise of power. And power-seeking is what this is all about. Our Constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump."

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