It’s been 23 days since a train carrying hazardous materials went off the rails in East Palestine, Ohio. 23 days of dread for the nearly 5000 Americans now asking whether their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink. And like so much else in America, this environmental disaster quickly divided the country along partisan lines. Former President Trump led that charge when he visited the town inside a deep red pocket of Ohio on Wednesday. Unfortunately, as you know, in too many cases, your goodness and perseverance, you are met with indifference and betrayal. In some cases, they were doing nothing for you. They were intending to do absolutely nothing for you. Transportation Secretary Pete Buda, judge who visited the town a day after Trump’s trip, flatly dismissed that accusation. What we’ve seen is industry goes to Washington and they get their way. They got their way on a Christmas tree of regulatory changes that the last administration made on his way out the door in December of 20, 20 but caught in the middle of all of this are the residents of East Palestine who just want to know if it’s safe to resume their lives. Just listen to one resident confront the CEO of the rail company at a CNN town hall last week. And feel safe in this town now. You took it away from me. Did you shorten my life? Now I want to retire and enjoy it. How are we going to enjoy it? Do I mow the grass Do I can I plant tomatoes next summer? What can I do? Every day I cough through a little cough here. A little cough. I’ve never had it I got rashes on my cheek and all my arm from the firm to do. I don’t call it a rail and I call it a disaster. Let’s discuss all of this and more with CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, CNN’s Melanie Sloan, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla, and The Atlantic’s Adam Harris. This is become a much bigger situation, I think, than the White House anticipated. They would they would concede that, but they didn’t really see the politics of this coming. But I want to start, though, just from a real perspective. We just heard from that man. The people of East Palestine are asking for really practical things. They’re asking for water. They’re asking for help. And if the question is, is that being provided from the federal government, here is the answer that the Ohio governor has given, who is a Republican Mike DeWine. He said, yes, the president called him. He said, we don’t need anything. Here’s his spokesperson telling The Washington Post that the agencies provide the appropriate response and was the president of the White House in touch with the governor frequently? The answer to those questions are yes. He also described the EPA, the EPA, as extremely responsive So on some level, there’s the practical and there’s a political from the practical perspective, the Republicans in the state say the federal government is responding But on the political, we’re hearing something else. Without question. You know, and the White House, if you talk to officials, they will concede that they were slow to recognize the optics of the seriousness of this. They did send the EPA. And the president does not go to every disaster site. It’s not of course it’s not possible. The vice president doesn’t go to every disaster site. There weren’t any fatalities in this. So they were sort of sending the appropriate officials as they saw them. There’s about a thousand a train derailments every year in the country. This is different on many levels because of the optics of it. Yes, there are serious questions and ramifications about the soil, about water. But really, this became seized upon by the right wing media in many respects and fanned the flames. And the Biden administration allowed them to do that because they did not optics Leigh Show. And it was all happening at the same time the president was in Ukraine. So just this confluence of events it made, it is Palestine versus Ukraine and it really just shined a light on the divide in the country. And of course, this county, Columbiana County. 72% voted for Trump and 27%. And we had we have those numbers. And it’s an interesting the political dynamics here. I mean, look at this county. 2000. It went for Bush by three. By 20, 20. It was up Trump by 40. Five. So this is absolutely Trump country. It makes sense that he would be there and that he would be pressing the peace process. And it also coincides with him launching his campaign and I might also note that this is one of those places in the country that you would consider a news desert. So a lot of these people who are his supporters don’t realize that a lot of the policies that the Trump administration stood for are policies that might or stood against, might, might have helped in this case, including gutting the EPA. The EPA were the first ones out there monitoring the water, monitoring the toxic fumes, the train regulations that were gutted under Trump Again, these are all things that you question yourself. Would these things have helped? And then thirdly, the tax cuts, the corporate tax cuts that a lot of these companies took advantage of were not required to be reinvested into things like safety regulations. But these are not things that his voters are going to know. So they’re very impressionable. This is a very emotional issue. We’re not going to know for possibly decades the full ramifications of the health impact on a lot of these resources. And interestingly, the governor, Mike DeWine, is saying to Congress, this train wasn’t marked as carrying extremely hazardous materials, and so it wasn’t subject to a lot of regulations. Why is that? Is Congress going to fix that? But I want to play here. This is what President Biden said to reporters on Friday about whether he would go to East Palestine where he planning to travel to. He called this problem not. I’ve spoken with every single major figure in both the United Way and both Pennsylvania and Ohio. And so the idea that we’re not engaged is is simply not not there. What do you make of that? Adam? Should he go? You know, as Jeff said, right. This this president’s don’t travel to every disaster, anything. The optics of this. Right. He’s travel to Ukraine at this point. It is probably politically smart for him to travel to Palestine, Ohio, in order to to sort of, you know, remind people that, yes, it’s not just my agencies that are here, but it is also to me that that is here for you as well. But as you were as you were saying, this was a county that the president, the former president carried by a significant margin. Right. If there’s one thing that we know about the former president, he enjoys shoring up his base. He likes to talk to his people. And so it’s not a surprise that he went out there. And it’s also not a surprise that Republicans have seized on something where they’ve talked for years about this being a place that America’s forgotten about. The Democrats have forgotten about that when the president doesn’t visit a place like East Palestine, it becomes a significant issue. Yeah. And I think at this point, Jeff, you made this point, the White House didn’t anticipate that this would become a political punching bag. And for that, they actually are at fault. I mean, they’re supposed to be paying attention to this. But here’s the Pete footage of it all. He has been at the center of this, even though the cleanup is the responsibility of a different agency, the EPA. Listen to how Fox anchors have been talking about him this week. If Pothole Pete seems lazy and out of touch to all of you, that is because it’s true. The guy didn’t put his arm around a single person and tell him everything is going to be all right. And this is the guy Democrats think can be president. The man should never have been put in this position in the first place and should be fired immediately. There’s never been a Cabinet secretary, this flamboyantly incompetent and this so obviously uncaring almost to the point of evil. If we’re being honest about it, I mean, we are. What’s interesting to me is that this is the transportation secretary, but they’re the ones bringing up running for president, it seems. This is a proactive step to keep the judge down or not. It’s pretty clear to me that they do see him as a potential rival here for president at some point in the future. Maybe not in 24, but maybe four years down the line from then. But he is in the crosshairs, right? I mean, I think it was an unforced error to not have them. And he acknowledged he admitted that I mean, obviously, there’s the tangible things that the government has provided, but there’s also the lack of trust in the community. And seeing the government officials showing up, I think was an important step that even the transition secretary admitted. That being said, I mean, he he has this platform. It can be a powerful platform to raise his profile. We saw him, you know, sticking it to the airlines. He was also at the center of the freight rail negotiations. And he’s also been taking a lot of heat for these things as well. So there’s the potential for blowback. And you see Republicans seizing on that.
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