On tonight's edition of his Fox News show, Bill O'Reilly brought on Lou Dobbs to accuse former Vice President Al Gore of lying when he says he does not personally profit from investments in green ventures. But Dobbs offered no evidence to support the claim, and, moreover, this is just the latest iteration of Fox's effort to smear Gore over his renewable energy and climate change advocacy.
During a segment on the June 4, 2009, edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly, the current anchor of Fox News' America Live, misrepresented congressional testimony given by Gore to suggest that he had lied when he said he did not profit from his climate-related ventures.
As we pointed out at the time, when asked about profiting from his investments through the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins related to renewable energy and climate change mitigation during April 24, 2009, congressional testimony, Gore stated that “every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge.” He later added that "[e]very penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy" has “gone to” the non-profit."
That smear by O'Reilly and Kelly came just days after Laura Ingraham, while guest hosting the Factor, aired a dishonestly edited version of Gore's testimony that cropped out his statements that he donated the money he made from his investments. Fox promoted that segment on “Gore's green money,” asking: “Is Al making tons of cash off global warming fears?”
Now, The O'Reilly Factor returned to the same old allegations, although they still have no evidence that Gore is lying.
Tonight, while discussing Gore's firm, Generation Investment Management, O'Reilly stated: “Now Gore won't say how much money -- and some people say it's a hundred million dollars that he's made off these green investments -- he won't say it, but he does say that every profit -- all the profit -- he reinvests into green energy. That's what he says.”
He then asked Dobbs: “Do you believe him?”
Dobbs replied: “No, but then again I'm a little skeptical of any of those kinds of claims because one thing we do know, the man's family estate came from dirty nasty fossil fuel -- much of it. We do know that this vice president has not actually been examined closely by the national liberal press for some reason. His personal finances remain untouched.”
Dobbs provided no evidence to back up his contention that Gore isn't telling the truth. It appears just to be Dobbs' gut feeling.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this latest attempt to smear Gore. After all, Fox has a long history of mocking the former vice president and distorting his words.