February may be the shortest month, but I can’t imagine it feels that way for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, leading to a massive controlled release of vinyl chloride and other dangerous chemicals — and with that release, concerns about environmental damage and toxic exposure for local residents.
For weeks, Buttigieg has tried to downplay the disaster.
He tried putting the blame for the accident, absent any evidence it was the cause, on a rule repealed by the Trump administration that required advanced braking systems on trains carrying toxic chemicals. All this did, however, was put a spotlight on the fact his DOT had done nothing substantive to reinstate that rule.
During an interview with Yahoo Finance, he was asked about the derailment and seemed to minimize it as much as possible: “While this horrible situation has gotten a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing.” Whoops.
Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson, a Republican in whose district the train derailed, gave the secretary a failing grade for his response.
“I give Secretary Buttigieg an F. I mean, he hasn’t shown up,” Johnson said. “How can you be evaluated if you haven’t shown up? So, gets an F.”
And even President Joe Biden’s closest aides seem to be giving Buttigieg low marks for how he’s handled the situation. And I don’t mean behind closed doors. I mean in Twitter threads.
In a response to a video where Buttigieg refused to answer a Daily Caller reporter’s questions about the East Palestine derailment and then took a picture of the reporter, Biden campaign manager and aide Jen O’Malley Dillon reportedly responded “Ugh” in a since-deleted comment.
In the video, posted Tuesday, Jennie Taer asked Buttigieg what he had “to say to the folks in Ohio — East Palestine — who are suffering right now.”
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