Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is the very first openly gay man to serve as secretary of a cabinet-level agency. That “achievement” is all he’s added to his resume in two years.
Otherwise, it’s screw-up after clusterfark after “not my department. The worst-kept secret in Washington is that the supply chain problems were worse than they should have been and lasted longer because the former mayor who ran a mid-sized American city was still trying to grow into a job he never should have been given in the first place.
The Christmas clusterfark involving Southwest Airlines was at least partly his fault given that it involved air traffic control snafus as well as scheduling problems from the airline. But you have to wonder about a man who blames a former president three years removed from office for the current disaster.
On Tuesday, ten days after the derailment, Buttigieg touted the progress his agency has made to enhance rail safety. But he added they they have been handicapped by former president Trump’s move in 2018 to withdraw a rule pertaining to braking systems for trains transporting dangerous chemicals. He didn’t explain why the Biden administration has never reinstated the rule.
“In the wake of the East Palestine derailment and its impact on hundreds of residents, we’re seeing lots of newfound or renewed (and welcome) interest in our work on rail safety, so I wanted to share more about what we’ve been doing in this area,” Buttigieg tweeted.
Huh? Meanwhile, we have this from an East Palestine town hall:
East Palestine, Ohio resident: “Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?”
Mayor Trent Conaway: “I don’t know; your guess is as good as me. Yesterday was the first day I heard anything from the White House.” pic.twitter.com/3AT47Zlb66
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) February 16, 2023
Buttigieg had tweeted on Tuesday that the department was “constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe.”
On Wednesday night, responding to tweets from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Buttigieg said he was “glad to see newfound bipartisan agreement” over the issue.
In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon.”
Related: So Far, No Help for East Palestine From the Biden Administration
It’s not just the train derailment that makes Secretary Buttigieg look like an idiot. Remember “racist roads”?
Buttigieg is notorious for wasting taxpayers’ time on fatuities such as “racist roads” and gender-inclusive pronouns while transportation infrastructure falls apart. A hyperambitious politician with almost no useful experience, he is desperate to shore up his frayed relations with black Democratic voters, the result of his racially divisive tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Hence his focus on anything but transportation, such as the rail strike that could have brought the nation’s economy to its knees but for Congress’s intervention, or, for another example, the recent collapse of air travel over Christmas and the Federal Aviation Administration’s subsequent computer malfunction — or the shipping crisis in U.S. ports.
It’s a stretch to say Buttigieg might have prevented the accident or eased the concerns of residents. But as a point man during a serious national disaster like the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Pete Buttigieg has epically failed to fulfill his duties,
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