Ivanka Trump Meets Al Gore For Climate Policy Meeting At Trump Tower

Update: 3:47 p.m. –- President-elect Donald Trump met Monday with outspoken environmentalist Al Gore, following Ivanka Trump’s private meeting with the former vice president. Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller had told reporters the president-elect would not be meeting with Gore during his visit to Trump Towers in New York City.

"I had a lengthy and very productive session with the President-elect, it was a sincere search for areas of common ground," Gore told Trump’s press pool following his dual meetings with the Trumps. "I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the President-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I'm just going to leave it at that."

Original story:

Ivanka Trump hosted a private meeting with environmentalist and former Vice President Al Gore Monday morning to discuss climate policies under the next White House administration. Trump, the oldest daughter of President-elect Donald Trump and a former donor to the Democratic Party, has shown a longtime interest in issues concerning global warming and climate change, straying from her father's conservative stance on the topic.

Donald Trump has said he'd leave his business interests entirely in the hands of his children, who would not have an involvement in his administration. His daughter's meeting with Gore, an outspoken believer in climate change who has pushed for a more serious response to global warming from the federal government, raises new questions about how exactly he intends on keeping his family-led business and White House administration separate. Jason Miller, the communications director for Donald Trump's transition team, announced the visit from Gore Monday as the next administration held meetings at Trump Tower in New York City with political leaders and corporate elites to fill open cabinet positions.

Ivanka Trump was active in campaigning for her father during the 2016 presidential election, speaking at the Republican National Convention and creating a maternity leave policy that helped win over white women voters. The young entrepreneur and businesswoman also recently sat in on an international diplomacy meeting with Japan’s prime minister.

Ivanka Trump hasn’t taken a public stance on climate change, and left it out of her major speech at the Republican convention. Her meeting with Gore, however, suggests it could be one of the core issues she’s focusing on as her father prepares to assume the White House on Jan. 20. What influence she has in creating or enacting national climate change policies under the next administration remains unclear.

Donald Trump has called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government. "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," he tweeted in 2012.