The Biden administration has taken a tremendous amount of criticism for its mishandling of the East Palestine train derailment, namely for its delayed response and rejection of requests for federal assistance in the wake of the disaster.
Not only did FEMA repeatedly refuse to provide assistance to East Palestine for weeks, but it also wasn’t until after Trump announced his intention to visit East Palestine that FEMA flipped and decided it would send help. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also repeatedly downplayed what was happening, but he curiously visited East Palestine the day after Trump’s visit — and his visit didn’t go well at all.
Naturally, the White House has tried to save face by claiming the accident was the result of Trump-era deregulation.
“Congressional Republicans and former Trump Administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told USA Today.
During his visit to East Palestine, Pete Buttigieg similarly suggested the accident was caused by Trump-era deregulation.
“One thing [Trump] could do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch,” Buttigieg said. “I heard him say he had nothing to do with it, even though it was in his administration. So if you have nothing to do with it, and they did it in his administration against his will, maybe he could come out and say that — that he supports us moving in a different direction.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer also joined in on the Trump Blame Game this week. “The Trump administration repealed requirements for an electronic braking system because, according to them, the safety benefits were not worth the cost,” he said. “I think the people of East Palestine now know that analysis was wrong and that they’re suffering the consequences of rail companies putting profits over people.”
Related: No One in East Palestine Believes Anything the Biden Administration Is Telling Them
But every single one of these politicians knows that this is a lie. “First, the Trump administration did not repeal a requirement for electronic braking systems. The requirement for electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes, which the Obama administration pushed in 2015, never came into effect,” explains National Review. “The Trump administration abandoned it. It did so based on a National Academy of Sciences report ordered by Congress that found the safety benefits of the braking system to be inconclusive and a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that questioned the Obama administration’s data supporting the rule.”
The Obama rule also wouldn’t even have applied to the East Palestine train.
Further, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been disputing the Democrats’ talking points for some time now. When CNN’s Jake Tapper tried to use this talking point last week, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy debunked it.
“The NTSB has looked at electronically controlled pneumatic braking for a number of years and we did some testing as well. Certainly, it would improve safety. But for this investigation and for this derailment, ECP brakes would not have prevented the derailment,” Homendy explained. “The wheel bearing failed on car number 23, so even with ECP brakes, the derailment would have occurred, the fire would have ensued, and the five vinyl chloride tank cars would still have to be vented and burned.”
Even the Washington Post‘s fact checker Glenn Kessler acknowledged that “Trump’s rollback of regulations can’t be blamed for Ohio train wreck.” According to Kessler, his team “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,” and ultimately concluded that “none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident.”
You can bet that the Washington Post used every possible resource to find something to justify the accusations made against Trump, but they failed.
Yet, the Democrats continue to push this known lie. And something tells me they won’t stop — which tells you just how awful the Biden administration’s response has been.
