Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared to blame former President Trump and Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., for the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Thursday after facing intense backlash for his own performance.
Buttigieg spoke with MSNBC’s Joy Reid when "The ReidOut" host shifted the discussion to Trump’s visit to the town the day before, claiming that his roll back of regulations was partially responsible for the accident in the first place.
"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?" Reid asked.
"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.
He continued, "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."
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The comments were similar to ones Buttigieg made one week prior to Yahoo! Finance that appeared to downplay the derailment.
"Look, rail safety is something that has evolved a lot over the years, but there's clearly more that needs to be done because while this horrible situation has gotten a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing," Buttigieg said at the time.
Reid continued to harp on Republican criticism of Buttigieg, remarking on Rubio's call for him to resign.
"You mentioned political silly season. I mean, it is. It’s a campaign season. One of the people who have taken a lot of the blame and taken a lot of the bricks is you. Senator Marco Rubio said you should resign. There’s been a lot of criticism over the time it took to arrive, for you to personally go, for the president to go. And they’re even using the president’s trip to Ukraine as a wedge. What do you have to say to Senator Rubio, who is blaming you and saying you should resign as a result of what happened in East Palestine?" Reid asked.
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Buttigieg answered, "Well, the strange thing about hearing that from Senator Rubio is that the last time I had gotten a communication from him about railroad regulation was when he had signed a letter asking us to weaken our inspection practices. So but let me say this, I mean, if anybody, regardless of what they have done in the past, is serious about the future, Republican, Democrat, independent, if anybody has found religion on the subject of making sure that we actually regulate these corporations and hold them accountable, then I am calling them in and inviting them to the table."
On Feb. 14, Buttigieg tweeted out his support for regulations 11 days after the derailment in.
"We are making historic investments on rail safety through funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, work that accelerates this year and continue in the years to come," Buttigieg tweeted.
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Buttigieg finally visited East Palestine on Thursday. However, during his visit, he frequently dodged reporter questions while his press secretary attempted to control the media.
