On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” and tried to downplay former President Donald Trump visiting East Palestine, Ohio with water and supplies after a toxic train derailment cause hazardous materials to leak into the environment.
Buttigieg not only blamed Trump for the derailment that happened earlier this month, he also told host Joy Reid that it was “ironic” for the former president to visit after he took “down regulations.”
Reid asked, “You know, the sort of theatrics of Donald Trump being in Palestine were odd, but this is a community that voted overwhelmingly for him.
The county that Palestine is in voted 71/29 for Donald Trump. I want you to reflect on the irony. In 2016, it was 68/26. This is a Trump county. What do you make of the fact he went there despite the fact the regulations he rolled back were partly responsible for this tragedy?”
Buttigieg replied, “It was definitely an ironic thing to do. You take down regulations, you water down regulations, you weaken the power of the administration to deal with freight railroad companies, and then you show up wanting to be a great friend of the people who have been impacted by a rail disaster.”
He added, “You know, this is somebody who, as far as I know, never went to a derailment site when one of those happens on his watch.
And there were thousands — even ones with fatalities. Never even sent his Transportation Secretary to go. Now that it’s campaign season, I guess things are different. We were there to work. We were there to get things done.”
What a joke. What exactly did Buttigieg get done? It’s his job is to handle transportation issues, yet it took him three weeks to visit the town after the derailment disaster, which he didn’t do until AFTER Trump, and even then he refused to take questions.
Check it out:
Buttigieg FINALLY makes time for E.Palestine today, but dodges questions all day while his press sec'y, Kerry Arndt refuses to be on camera! She called video-taping "aggressive!" WHAT?? She needs to be fired for not fulfilling her job description! pic.twitter.com/tXrdiqilun
— LoriAYoung (@LoriPriceYoung) February 24, 2023
Yet Trump show up with truckloads of water and supplies for the Ohio residents who have been without clean water since February 10th:
Tens of thousands of pounds of goods, food, water being delivered to the people of East Palestine, Ohio right now before Trump’s visit.
Trump paid for all of it.
Number of goods delivered from the Biden Administration: 0. pic.twitter.com/QQADqZl9Uy
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 22, 2023
