The aftermath of the train derailment. NTSB photo.
Donald Trump visited East Palestine Ohio after a major train derailment released dangerous chemicals. BBC. Trump brought bottled water and cleaning supplies for the people of the town. Trump was extremely critical of the Biden administration's response to the disaster. The people of East Palestine agreed with Trump, with many of them saying "let's go Brandon". The area went for Trump during the 2020 election. Biden has largely ignored the disaster and Trump pointed out that there was little interest in Biden's administration in dealing with the disaster until he announced he was coming for a visit. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has been criticized for his lack of response on the disaster, will visit the town on Thursday.
My Comment:
This was an easy win for Donald Trump. All he had to do was show up and he was already doing better than the Biden administration. The fact that he had cleaning supplies and water with him was just icing on the cake.
You can tell how much of a loss this was for the Biden administration by seeing how shrill Biden supporters are on Twitter. They are saying Trump is a disappointment, criticizing the Trump branded water he handed out and generally acting like the derailment was Trump's fault, despite Biden being in charge for a good two years now.
And the media? It was pretty hard to find a news article about this visit. There is a reason why I am using the BBC as a source as they were one of the few outlets that actually gave this story some coverage (and mostly fair as well). The only other article I saw that was from a national news outlet was a Politico report that somehow argued that Trump's visit gave Biden some breathing space, a claim that was so bizarre I didn't even read the article.
Regardless, it just goes to show how badly Biden fumbled this disaster. It wasn't hard for Trump to show up and act like he cared. Will the supplies he dropped off actually help that much? Probably not, but at least he did something and acts like he cares. Biden's not even in the country, too busy trying to start a nuclear war with Russia, and Pete Buttigieg? Don't get me started.
But it would have been absurdly simple for Biden to have done something. He didn't even have to show up himself, just have FEMA show up with some supplies and have some mid-level functionary there to show the flag a little and a lot of the criticism of Biden would have been avoided. He would have still been blamed for the disaster itself but that was unavoidable.
So why did Biden and his team fumble this so badly? Like I said, it would have been trivial to act like they were doing something about this disaster, they chose not to do so. Pure incompetence is a good explanation as both Biden and Buttigieg have been incredibly ineffective in their roles. I wouldn't be surprised if Biden himself is still completely unaware that the disaster even happened.
The other answer is that Biden is so focused on the Ukraine war that he isn't paying attention to anything else. Ukraine has been a black hole of funding and it's sucking away everything else. Despite the lack of attention to foreign policy during the 2020 campaign it is dominating the Biden administration.
But it is very possible the reason is that Biden and his team simply doesn't care about the people in East Palestine. Very few people in the town and surrounding area voted for Biden and the population is mostly white. These aren't the people that put Biden power, indeed, they are Biden's greatest opponents. It's classic flyover country and the powers that be probably view the people there getting poisoned as a solution, not a problem.
What will be really interesting is when Pete Buttigieg visits on Thursday. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets called off, given the utter disgust people in East Palestine have for him. If it doesn't it will be a very interesting speech and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Buttigieg gets a very cold shoulder from the people of the town...
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