Al Gore Meets with Donald, Ivanka Trump

Former Vice President Al Gore met with President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka on Monday to discuss an issue both Gore and Trump have opposite views on — climate change.

During the daily transition briefing call Monday morning, Communication Director Jason Miller told reporters that Gore would be meeting with Ivanka only to discuss climate issues and the president-elect had no plans to meet with Gore. The issue, according to a recent report from Politico has now become one of her signature issues in her role as first daughter.

After the 90 minute meeting, Gore told reporters inside Trump Towers that he had in fact met with both the president-elect and his daughter, with “the bulk of the time was with the president-elect” and the meeting was “very productive” without giving details of the meeting.

“I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect,” Gore said. “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bill of the time was with the President-eelct, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”

Gore, who ran for president in 2000 but lost to Republican George W. Bush, has dedicated his career on becoming a worldwide crusader in the fight against climate change. During the race, Gore warned as he stumped for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that Trump would steer the world towards a “climate catastrophe” if elected president based on the president-elect calls for the United State to pull out of the Paris Climate deal.

“We are going to cancel the Paris climate agreement and stop all payments of the U.S. tax dollars to the U.N. global warming programs,” Trump said in a speech in May that outlined his plans for America’s energy independence agenda in North Dakota.

In the past, Trump has called climate change a hoax “created by and for the Chinese.” However, last month Trump during a meeting with the New York Times indicated that he is willing to keep an “open mind” on the issue.

“We are going to look very carefully,” Trump said in the New York Times interview when asked about the issue of climate change. “I have an open mind to it. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change.”

Trump added he is concerned about how much the green measures has hurt and “cost our companies to become noncompetitive.

“I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully,” Trump said. “I think there is some connectivity… it depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now.”

On MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Monday night, Gore stated the conversation with the president-elect and his daughter was

“It’s no secret that Ivanka Trump s very committed to having a climate policy that makes sense for our country and for our world,” Gore said. “That was certainly evident in the conversation that I had with [Ivanka] before the conversation with the president-elect. I appreciate the fact that she is very concerned about this.”