Gore: ‘We Have to Be Ready for the President to Double Down on His Attacks on the Integrity of American Democracy’

During an appearance that aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” former Vice President Al Gore argued that given his perception that President Donald Trump has mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and the so-called climate crisis, his next objective could be to undermine American democracy.

For that reason, Gore encouraged viewers to “defend” the integrity of American democracy, if needed.

“We have a lot of challenges in our democracy right now, Chris,” he said. “And the president, as I said, is making the pandemic and the climate crisis worse. He is also making this challenge to our democracy worse by spreading false information, by trying to undermine the confidence in mail-in voting, which has never favored either party. In May, this year, because so many older people are more vulnerable to the pandemic and are just shocked and outraged at the horrible mishandling of the pandemic by the president.”

“But he’s trying to sow a lack of confidence in the outcome,” Gore continued. “And when I hear him say with mock horror that we might not even know the election result on election night, I remember another feature of the 2000 election is, it lasted 36 days, before the Supreme Court decision. And with all these mail-in ballots, it’s going to take some time to count them. And, as you know, one of the possible outcomes is that those who vote in-person on the day of the election may tilt one way. When they count this flood of mail-in ballots, it will reverse. At least, that’s what some of the analysts are telling us to watch out for.”

“So, we have to be ready for the president to double down on his attacks on the integrity of American democracy,” he added. “And we all need to be prepared to defend it. And I hope that Republicans will step up to defend our democracy as well.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor