Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was heckled by former Vice President Al Gore during a World Economic Forum (WEF) event in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, according to news coverage.
Gore booed Lutnick while the Commerce secretary was giving a speech at an invite-only dinner event hosted by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Mediaite reported on Wednesday. The report comes after Lutnick criticized Europe during his remarks, which prompted European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde to suddenly leave the dinner event, multiple outlets reported.
“I sat and listened to his remarks,” Gore said Wednesday in a statement provided to Mediaite. “I didn’t interrupt him in any way. It’s no secret that I think this administration’s energy policy is insane.”
“And at the end of his speech I reacted with how I felt, and so did several others,” Gore continued.
The WEF and a representative for Gore each did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
“During Secretary Lutnick’s three-minute speech, no one left hastily,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told the DCNF in a statement on Wednesday. “Only one person booed, and it was Al Gore.”
Moreover, Fox Business Network Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino wrote in a Wednesday X post that he was told by a “reliable” anonymous source that “at the dinner Lagarde walked out BEFORE [Lutnick’s] speech and was tired like everyone is at Davos.”
Lutnick claimed in an op-ed published by the Financial Times on Tuesday that the Trump administration was “not going to Davos to uphold the status quo,” but instead was going “to confront it head-on.”
“For far too long, the fate of the global economy has been decided by an international establishment who took America’s economic power and gave it to the rest of the world,” Lutnick wrote. “Some of our past leaders believed the lies that offshoring was necessary, borders were not, and our national interest needed to submit to global lower cost of labour for the common good. That approach failed the US, crushed American workers and ripped apart most of the rest of the world as well. It destroyed industries, weakened supply chains and left working people in most western countries behind.”
Gore suggested Wednesday that U.S. government policy should promote “regenerative agriculture” during a panel discussion at the WEF. Gore added that the U.S. needs “policies that [are] in recognition of the fact that governments around the world typically do subsidize farming, but don’t subsidize them in ways that incentivize them to go in the wrong direction, but incentivize them to go in the right direction.”
Gore, the failed 2000 Democratic presidential nominee, is the cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and also the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit organization which aims to combat the “climate crisis,” according to a biography on his website.
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