Trump remains the guy whom everyone on the Right still refers to as “President Trump,” forty percent of whom believe that Trump actually won the 2020 election and should be reinstated, and Trump still wears white shirts with the presidential seal and “President Trump” under it (In case he wanders off the property?). So Trump was at his most dangerous today when he played president, “visiting” East Palestine, Ohio, promising them “accountability” (How?) like a president would.
More importantly, Trump told the crowd that the leader of the free world, who was out of the country on a trip that must have taken a month to plan and was standing up for democracy in Ukraine and the United States, betrayed the people of Ohio. This is just beyond dangerous and reckless. Trump’s supporters ignored the train derailment for a week while they freaked about a Chinese spy balloon as if Chinese satellites were not looking down on us constantly every day.
Trump posted a report on his Truth Social account from the very Trump-friendly “Just the News.”
“We stand with you,” Trump told the crowd at the East Palestine Fire Department, “we pray for you, and we’ll stay with you in your fight to help answer and [get] accountability that you deserve.”
And how does Trump propose that he can do that? Through the magic powers of “almost president”? Then Trump went as low as any ex-president or candidate can go:
“Biden and FEMA said they would not send federal aid to [the town] under any circumstances,” Trump claimed, echoing an earlier allegation that the Biden administration was motivated to act on the East Palestine disaster after Trump himself indicated he would visit the town.
“We opened up the dam, and we got them to move,” Trump said on Wednesday
And that is just plain wrong. Gov. Mike DeWine declined federal assistance and worked with the railroads, probably hoping that if he kept FEMA out, they could get the trains rolling again in a shorter time. The EPA was always on the scene monitoring the danger to people! Last, the White House chose to send FEMA anyway (Not just because it proved to be too big a problem for Ohio), and that decision would take a day to put together properly, and yet simply because the announcement came out after Trump announced that he would visit, Trump took credit for FEMA doing what they were doing anyway.
So while the real president is just getting home from one of the most momentous presidential trips in our lifetimes, Trump tells a bunch of white rural folks that they’ve been “betrayed” by Biden. This is coming from a man who initially refused federal aid to California during the fires because “They won’t vote for me anyway!”
If that train had wrecked in the middle of Massachusets, Trump wouldn’t go anywhere near it. It’s the most base politics and it is so dangerous.
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: MUCH LEFT ADO
“accountability”
1.Obama’s administration put in regulations to stop these situations occurring.
2.Railroad owning oligarchs didn’t like these regulations, sure everyone was safer but it might be costing them the chance to make money.
3.These oligarchs paid lots of money to republicans to lift the regulations.
4. Trump and his cronies, loving the money, lifted the regulations to make everything less safe for everyone so that the oligarchs could make more money.
5. Inevitable situation occurs because regulations that would have stopped it aren’t there any more.
6.Now situation caused by their own greed has occurred and hurt many people and the environment, causing long lasting damage to people that don’t own railways, the oligarchs try to cover up how bad things are so that they can get back to making money faster. The republican governor assists them in this.
7. The damage is too bad to cover up and ‘fix’ properly so they try to blame the delay in fixing things (that they caused), on the Democrats, who actually would have stopped this whole thing happening in the first place if their safety legislation had applied, but, of course, the regulations WERE lifted by the republicans to ‘save costs’ and increase oligarch’s profits.
8. So now the whole situation is being reframed as the Democrat’s fault because they are seen as ‘slow to respond’ to a situation their regulations would have stopped, and responding with public, government money to fix a problem situation caused by a non-public company’s greed. i.e. The profits are privatized and the costs are socialized.
9.The cost of fixing the situation that their own greed caused is now something that the oligarchs won’t pay for, but you and me, the taxpayers and the victims of their malfeasance are now expected to pay for out of our taxes.
Accountability is clear, railway owning oligarchs and the republicans they bribed are entirely 100% accountable for both the situation occurring and the delay in starting the fixing of the situation.
And it is clear that they don’t like this and are trying to blame it all on Democrats, who are not responsible for any of it. But will now clear the whole mess up, at our expense.
Did I get that right?
You absolutely did get it right..Every. Single. Word. Well said!!!
I read somewhere that the EPA is going to bill the railroad company for the costs of the clean-up
I’m sure they’ll find some way to avoid paying anything, they always do.
See Union Carbide Bhopal.