Reader Jim Batterson wrote me this morning that Bari Weiss’s “Free Press” site had done an unfair hit job on the Biden administration by claiming (as many people have) that they were slow to respond to the train crash and aren’t doing much. The locals are saying the same thing. Jim claims that that’s unfair, and he notes that he found out by a simple bit of Googling on the Internet. First, here’s the Free Press article (click to read):
An a quote from Zito’s piece.
But while Trump and Vance and Gabbard are all showing up, the actual people running this country have been missing in action. It took until February 16—nearly a full two weeks after the crash—for the first top Biden official, EPA administrator Michael Regan, to be on the scene. Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg—who has one job, overseeing the infrastructure of this country—has not yet witnessed the catastrophe in person nor did he acknowledge it until February 13, though he is scheduled to arrive today. President Joe Biden released a fact sheet about the accident and tweeted about it, but he hasn’t given a speech about it, let alone visited the town. In fact, on Monday, he was 5,000 miles away in Kyiv, meeting with the president of Ukraine and pledging more aid in the war against Russia.
That the president ignored East Palestine and chose to make a big splash in a foreign country symbolizes what matters most to the White House, the town’s mayor Trent Conaway said.
“That was the biggest slap in the face,” Conaway fumed on Fox. “That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us… on President’s Day in our country, so I’m furious.”
Jim’s reaction:
There was a terrible hit job regarding the federal response to the train derailment on Free Press this morning. I mentioned to you last week that, based on my experience with the process of investigating airplane accidents, I expected that at least the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) and EPA would be on-site pretty quickly regardless of what the Ohio governor wanted or did not want. These are federal regulatory agencies and railroads are part of interstate commerce. Investigators have “go-packs” ready to head out as soon as they are notified that they are needed and must travel from around the country to the accident scene immediately.I was right. At this site there’s a day-by-day summary of EPA involvement with first report the day after the derailment occurred on the night of February 3.It says that first EPA responder was on-site at 2:00 the next morning. . . just five hours after the derailment was officially reported. In addition, The NTSB was there and did two press conferences: one the day after derailment (15 minutes long); and the second (10 minutes) on the day after that. Both available on video from ntsb.Neither MSM nor the crappy MSNBC are questioning the Trumpists and the supposed claims of locals and simply distorting the truth as far as I can see.
He added shortly thereafter (I’ve put the YouTube links in):
The NTSB press release is here. It contains hot links toward the bottom that link to videos of both the February 4 and February 5 press conferences led by the NTSB guy onsite at the crash.
Jim’s point (and I have to say that I agree with him after watching television coverage of the event, having read the Free Press article, and having read the press release, the government timeline, and watched the videos) is that the Free Press, much of the MSM, and some of the locals, are unfairly denigrating the Biden administration for a slow (and therefore) harmful response to the crash. (The Free Press, of course, is pretty much anti-Biden, so I’m not surprised there.) As for the claim that Biden didn’t give a speech wholly devoted to the crash, nor visited the town, doesn’t carry much weight with me.
Biden was in Europe, and he did comment on the crash. And really, officials going to the site is more a cosmetic thing than a practical thing—an attempt to convince the public that the government cares. But it does care, as you can see from above, and the fact that Mayor Pete will be there today is enough for me.
The people of East Palestine have indeed been hit by a scary event, with a wrecked train spewing toxic smoke into the air and water. They have every right to worry about how much they’ll be hurt by the crash. But as far as I can see, what with continual testing of the air and drinking water, I think the government has responded appropriately and is taking the accident with the due gravitas. If you want you can diss Biden and Mayor Pete for not showing up, fine, but I don’t see that you can diss the whole administration, as Zito did, by saying “the people running this country have been missing in action.” Really? I think you have to make the case not based on whether the President or Secretary of Transportation visited the site, but on how the government responded.