Former Vice President Al Gore heckled Howard Lutnick during a private World Economic Forum dinner in Davos, Switzerland, drawing attention to tensions between Trump administration officials and prominent global elites attending the annual gathering, as reported by The Gateway Pundit.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at an invite-only dinner hosted by Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, according to reporting by Mediaite.
Lutnick was delivering brief remarks when Gore reacted audibly, an exchange that later became the subject of competing accounts from attendees and officials.
When Howard Lutnick stepped offstage, Al Gore walked up to him and said, “Boo” – like he was trying to scare him, a source told The Post. Lutnick laughed and someone at the event remarked, “What an honor to have Al Gore boo,” according to an insider.https://t.co/En3oYPo5bA
— Woke is Bullshit! (@calrussell13) January 22, 2026
Mediaite reported that Gore booed Lutnick during the speech after the Commerce secretary criticized Europe in his remarks.
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Multiple outlets also reported that Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, left the dinner during the event, though the timing and reason for her departure were disputed.
In a statement provided Wednesday to Mediaite, Gore defended his conduct. “I sat and listened to his remarks,” Gore said.
“I didn’t interrupt him in any way. It’s no secret that I think this administration’s energy policy is insane.” He continued, “And at the end of his speech, I reacted with how I felt, and so did several others.”
The World Economic Forum did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did a representative for Gore, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The U.S. Department of Commerce offered a different account. “During Secretary Lutnick’s three-minute speech, no one left hastily,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told the DCNF on Wednesday.
“Only one person booed, and it was Al Gore.”
Adding to the conflicting narratives, Charles Gasparino, a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network, wrote in a post on X that a “reliable” anonymous source told him Lagarde walked out before Lutnick’s speech and was simply exhausted, noting that fatigue is common during the Davos schedule.
Lutnick has used his Davos appearances to outline the Trump administration’s economic posture toward global institutions.
In an op-ed published Tuesday by the Financial Times, Lutnick wrote that the administration was “not going to Davos to uphold the status quo,” but rather “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.
He added that prior policies promoting offshoring and eroding borders “failed the US, crushed American workers and ripped apart most of the rest of the world as well.”
Gore, meanwhile, continued to advocate for climate-focused policy during his time at the forum.
Al Gore fear mongering for 40yrs about ocean levels rising and then taking a PJ to Davos to boo the current admin is peak Democrat https://t.co/m7LMh3ncit
— Vanessa (@Nessakins_) January 21, 2026
Speaking Wednesday on a separate WEF panel, he said U.S. policy should encourage “regenerative agriculture” and argued governments should align farm subsidies to incentivize what he described as “the right direction.”
Gore, the Democratic nominee for president in 2000, is cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, according to his biography.
The exchange underscored the sharp contrast between the Trump administration’s economic message in Davos and the reception it has received from long-standing figures within the global policy and finance establishment.
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