An official with the National Transportation Safety Board overruled Pete Buttigieg about the Ohio train disaster after Biden’s Transportation Secretary tried to blame Trump for the debacle. Pete said:
“One thing he can do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had nothing to do with it, even though it was in his administration. So, if he had nothing to do with it and they did it in his administration against his will, maybe he can come out and say that he supports us moving in a different direction.
“We’re not afraid to own our policies when it comes to raising the bar on regulation I’ve got to think that him indicating that this is something that everybody, no matter how much you disagree on politics and presidential campaigns, can get behind — higher fines, tougher regulations on safety, Congress untying our hands on breaking rules, all the other things that go with that — that would be a nice thing for him to do.”
Buttigieg went on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show where he continued the blame game. Reid said:
“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?”
Pete said:
“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,” Buttigieg responded.
“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.”
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said: “The wheel bearing failed on car number 23. So even with ECP brakes, the derailment would have occurred. Enough with the politics on this. Enough with the politics. I don’t understand why this has gotten so political.
“This is a community that is suffering. This is not about politics. This is about addressing their needs, their concerns. That’s what this should be about. What I care about is caring for them. What I care about is figuring out how this happened.
“And what I care about and what the NTSB cares about is getting to what would prevent this from reoccurring.”
“This is about addressing their needs and their concerns.
“That’s what this should be about. So I don’t care about the politics. What I care about is figuring out how this happened,” she added.
She continued:
“I can tell you this much: This was 100% preventable.
“We call things accidents. There is no accident.
“Every single event that we investigate is preventable.
“Know that the NTSB has one goal, and that is safety and ensuring that this never happens again.
“There are often a lot of considerations in what goes into what is preventable. There is usually far more than one thing,” Homendy said.
