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Here Are All the Surprisingly Tough Questions Matt Lauer Fired at Al Gore During Contentious Interview on Al Jazeera ‘Hypocrisy’

Jan. 29, 2013 9:00am Jonathon M. Seidl

Every once in awhile, network television can still produce some hard-hitting interviews. Case-in-point: Matt Lauer confronted Al Gore on his “hypocrisy” surrounding the sale of his former network Current TV to Al Jazeera, which is in part owned by the oil-rich country of Qatar.

Skeptical? Just read some of Lauer’s tough questions:

• Was that [buying Current] always just an investment to you? Maybe I was naive, I thought it was something you had an ideological interest in in, so why did it become just an investment at the end?

• And yet even as you sold to Al Jazeera, you in the book blast other television news programs saying this [he then read this quote from Gore's new book]:

• And the critics jumped. ‘Here’s the guy who just sold Current TV to Al Jazeera, which gets an undetermined amount of funding from the country of Qatar, which gets its money from oil reserves.’ Isn’t there a contradiction in that?

• But if they get funding from a country that bases its wealth on fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are the enemy you target in climate change, isn’t there a bit of hypocrisy in that?

How did Gore respond? He squirmed a bit and said things such as:

• “As an independent network, the only independent news and information network, we found it difficult to compete in an age of conglomerates. And I’m very pleased Al Jazeera has established itself as a really respected news gathering network.”

• “I certainly understand that criticism. I disagree with it. I think Al Jazeera has, obviously, long since established itself as a really distinguished and effective news gathering organization. And by the way, its climate coverage has been far more extensive and high-quality.”

• “Well, I get the criticism. I just disagree with it, because this network has established itself. It’s objective, it’s won major awards in countries around the world and its climate coverage, as I said a moment ago, has been outstanding and extensive.”

Watch the hard-hitting interview below:

This story has been updated.

–

• ‘Al Gore Is Nothing but a Bulls***ter’: Current TV Staffers Reportedly Irate Over Network’s Sale to ‘Big Oil’
• Al Gore’s Current TV Rebuffs Advances by TheBlaze, Agrees to Sell Channel to Al Jazeera

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Comments (153)

KEELHAULUM
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 4:07pm
Just keep payin’ these A-Holes.
Nothing will change. Good work everybody! Go back to sleep.

Goodnight America,….wherever you are.

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KEELHAULUM
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 4:04pm
Lauer is a liberal suck pump,….NOT a journalist. Pathetic.
And it’s pathetic that The Blaze is giving this A$$ any credit at all. Do not give any of these liberals credit when they ask the shadow of a “hard hitting” question.
They should have been doing this long ago before Barry was ushered into the Oral Office. None of them have done their jobs even once that I can see. But you go ahead and ignore that facts that this is in large part why we are swirling the bowl now.

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Charles Curtis
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:57pm
So WOW is that a fluff piece. . . My youngest granddaughter hits harder(while in utero). The major question to ask is, why did you sell it? If it was such a winner, of course you would not, unless you were needing capital for another hack system to scam more people into investing into your flim-flam man operations. Your not a recovering politician you still lie.

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Uechi
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:26pm
How many years and how many phony Progressive awards and now the media has discovered that Al baby is a lying pos hypocrite? What an astute left wing tree hugging media we have in this country.

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Mephisto
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:21pm
Maybe it’s the **** clogging Matt Lauer’s brain, or lack thereof letting in some fresh air and clearing out the cobwebs. Every once in a while, these leftist “useful idiots” gets it right.

The question, do you think it was intentional or unintentional. Considering it’s Matt Lauer and NBC, it’s probably unintentional.

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SkyhawkFlyer
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:19pm
So, what I’m hearing from Al Jazeera Gore is, “the criticism is valid but I’m going to be a hypocrite, anyway.”

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AnotherLiberalDouche
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:15pm
Sorry but it’s not a “tough” interview if you just ignore the answers and don’t follow up. It might as well have gone like this…..

MATT: Al, they say you are a complete doooshbag for many reasons, one of those being that you sold your network to the very people you constantly bash for “climate change”. Isn’t it hypocritical to make money by writing about the evils of fossil fuels and then sell your network to a company backed by fossil fuel money?

AL: Well Matt, that’s certainly one point of view. One I disagree with. By the way, did you know that scientists now say there is evidence climate change may be making polar bears gay? And of course gay polar bears mean extinction may happen even faster. We really need to do something about climate change.

MATT: (Looking at Al with love in his eyes) Wow! That is so fascinating. Al, I’d really like to thank you for clearing everything up and for all the great work you do.

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HollyW
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:11pm
According to a report in the Daily Rash, Al Gore sold his TV network because he’s been traveling to third world countries dressed as a priest and listening to confessions. He also claims he’s building an ark. http://www.thedailyrash.com/al-gore-becomes-a-priest-plans-to-build-ark

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Joyce
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 3:04pm
I have to say that your choices of editing and your choices of videos reminds me more of something the Huffington Post would produce. You could have edited this piece of crap down to what they article was about. We shouldn’t have been made to suffer anymore of that man then what was needed. Shame on you and please get rid of the Progressives you have working for you. I didn’t sign on to the Blaze to listen or read from them or their beliefs. As for Matt baby he doesn’t impress me. If he wants to do that let him ask Hillary baby some question about Bengazi. Or the POTUS about Skeet shooting.lol Those are just little lies. Let him cut his journalistic teeth on those. I

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Leonardoverse.com
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 2:43pm
That’s it? You call that tough?

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linearnonlinear
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 2:28pm
Matt Lauer? I don’t even need to watch the video. Sending out Lauer to do hard hitting news would be like having Lindsay Lohan play Elizabeth Taylor.

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StageCoachDriver
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 2:18pm
Al is just like everyone else – he goes where the money is.

He’s a long time Apple board member. Engineered the Steve Jobs stock deal that got the company in trouble. Stands behind Apple’s outsource policy to build iMumble devices in China (with child labor we’re finding out now). Is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins et al, a major venture capital firm (much bigger than Mitt’s Bain Capital). And sells his cable channel to really really big oil.

Why is anyone surprised?

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Ricolip
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 2:12pm
He’s fat, he’s white, he’s rich and he is a Democrat?

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DukeOfEarl
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 2:00pm
Remember the Beverly Hillbillies tune?
Al Gore the real JD Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies.
That tuns should go to Gore in verse.

Come and listen to my story about the X VP Gore
The inventor of the Internet carbon footprints and much more
Then one day he was making such a mess
Cause he could not fine his polka dot dress
“Eye Shadow Pantyhose”
Well the next thing ya know Al grows his ****
The kin folks say Al move away from here.
They said Californee is the place you otta be
So he put on his red dress and changed his name to Beverly
Hills that is Crack heads Gutless movie stars.

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Jack_Reacher
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:43pm
It was all I could do to keep my breakfast down and still listen to the most obnoxious, irrelevant has-been the world has ever seen. How criminal this SOB is for trying to scare the world that unless they do what he suggests regarding global warming, (which is solely to fill his pockets with $$), the world is going to end.

Anyone that believes the climate is capable of being controlled by man is as nutty as a fruitcake. These “devastating disasters” of which Algore the Ridiculous referred to have been happening since Christ was a Corporal! Yet this fat-a** blowhard continues to reinvent his has-been status by now trying to sell books on the subject. Climate control is a buzz word for “how to make a few people wealthy and in complete control.” Nothing more.

This guy needs the crap literally beat out of him. Of course as full of crap as he is, that might take a while.

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Salvelinus
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:41pm
More “Manufactured Outrage”

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AmericaMustBeFree
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:37pm
Just another elitist who is all about, “me, me, me and I, I, I”! Al Gore is disgusting.. lie lie lie! Global warming is how Gore has enriched himself.. but really Matt, why didn’t you ask Al how he has personally stopped global warming… what has he spent the billions on??? Cause the only one who can stop global warming is God Almighty!

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jas7751
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:36pm
Did Big Al invent the, as he says “computer term”, hack?

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libh8er
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:21pm
This man was almost our president…. chilling isn’t it?

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Al J Zira
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:21pm
Where was the question: You have made billions off of a made up crisis. how do you sleep at night?

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wadajada
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 1:16pm
Al looks like someone put a hose up his ****……. and pumped him full of air!!!!!

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ConcernedCitizenSubject
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 12:57pm
Not bad for an NBC “news” person.

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jnfomo
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 12:51pm
So is this the new tactic from the left? Left-leaning journalists suddenly appearing to be doing their job by asking “tough” questions, yet not doing their job because they are accepting indirect and unrelated answers. In essence, they are still peeing on our leg and telling us it’s raining.

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shorelineliz
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 12:42pm
Al Gore’s responses are as slick as the oil money he just got. If Al-Jezeera is a news organization that is distinguished, effective, respected and high quality then I have a bunker in the Middle East for you to visit filled with rotting corpses!

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conservredneck
Posted on January 29, 2013 at 12:35pm
Its the only independent because its MY MONEY!!!

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