Not only is Pete Buttigieg being investigated by the U.S. Transportation Department’s Inspector General for using government planes for privacy use, he and other leftist’s claim that the East Palestine derailment was Trump’s fault got smacked down recently by The Washington Post‘s fact checker, Glenn Kessler.
Trump’s comment during his tour of East Palestine was widely interpreted to mean that he had nothing to do with regulatory rollbacks during his presidency — an odd remark since he frequently celebrated how many regs he had eliminated. (He often exaggerated the impact of his record, but that’s another story.)
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, said Trump was speaking more generally about regulatory changes being falsely blamed for the derailment of 38 train cars, including 11 carrying hazardous materials, in East Palestine on Feb. 3. Biden administration officials have strongly suggested that the Trump administration buckled under pressure from rail industry lobbyists, laying the groundwork for an accident.
We decided to examine every possible regulatory change made under Trump that could be related to the accident and assess whether it could have made an impact. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, said the Norfolk Southern crew received an alert about an overheated wheel bearing and was trying to slow the train before it came off the tracks.
From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident.
If it were true that Trump’s policies were the reason for the debacle, as Kessler notes, Biden made no effort to reinstate the rules in question. Kessler also says that Biden did start a new safety audit program in light of the regular ones Trump ended during his term. In reality, the blame Trump effort for East Palestine was an albeit weak attempt to potentially deflect in hopes of somehow silencing Biden’s critics.
Green Jihad 