Former Vice President and renowned globalist Al Gore admitted that President Donald Trump may have won the presidency because voters simply no longer trust so-called “experts” and elites like him after the many failures of “hyperglobalization.”
Gore made his remarks on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show that aired on Friday evening while discussing his various projects to combat climate change.
Hayes argued that resistance to climate change is “cultural” and opposed by people who associate it with “those liberals who aren’t like you who want to tell you want to do” and “a whole lot of cultural baggage.”
Gore said that that opposition has to be put in the larger context of the downward pressure that unchecked globalization has put on people’s wages.
“We’re seeing huge changes in the global economy and the American economy,” Gore said. “Wages have stagnated for middle-income families for decades … and there is a lot of understandable unrest, and elites were slow to recognize it because the increasing inequalities kept the elites’ income going up. ”
Gore added that “meanwhile, hyperglobalization flung jobs to low-wage venues … automation started hollowing out a lot of the jobs in retail.”
“People started to question the reliability of experts who have charted this globalization path and polices that were supposed to improve their lives,” Gore said.
In a rare instance when a liberal like Gore has been challenged on the left-wing network, Hayes immediately jumped in and pointed out that Gore was one of those so-called experts.
“You were one of them,” Hayes told Gore.
“Absolutely, I’ll own up that,” a somewhat sheepish Gore replied before arguing that conditions were better in the 1990s.
Gore then said politicians must understand they have an “obligation to those who are hurt and damaged by” globalization and automation and give them new educational and vocational opportunities. He then, of course, took a shot at Trump, saying that a “demagogue” like Trump had an “understandable appeal” by arguing that America needed to “return to the past and everything’s going to be fine.”
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria also conceded this week that Trump’s election was a “class rebellion” against elites like himself and Hillary Clinton.
“The election of Donald Trump is really a kind of a class rebellion against people like us, educated professionals who live in cities who have cosmopolitan views about a lot of things,” Zakaria said this week. “I think there’s a whole part of America that’s sick and tired of being told what to do by this overeducated professional elite that Hillary Clinton in many ways perfectly represented, and that’s why they’re sticking with him.”