In an interview on Good Morning America on Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was pressed about the administration’s widely panned response to the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month.
“The administration has come under some fire for the response. The Mayor of East Palestine has said it took nearly two weeks for the White House to contact them, and there were shouts of, ‘Where is Pete Buttigieg’ at a town hall meeting last week,” noted George Stephanopoulos. “What’s your response to that? When are you going to go to East Palestine?”
Buttigieg told Stephanopoulos he is planning to go to East Palestine, but did not say when.
“Well, I am planning to go, and our folks were on the ground from the first hours. I do want to stress that the NTSB needs to be able to do its work independently.”
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PETE BUTTIGIEG: “Look, I was mayor of my hometown for eight years. We dealt with a lot of disasters.” pic.twitter.com/h5NV0aKTnP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 21, 2023
Buttigieg then seemed to defend his poor response to the disaster. “There are two kinds of people who show up when you have that kind of disaster experience, people who are there because they have a specific job to do and are there to get something done, and people who are there to look good and have their picture taken. When I go, it will be about action,” he said, in an apparent swipe at Trump, who is visiting East Palestine on Wednesday. However, the announcement of Trump’s visit may have finally prompted FEMA to come to East Palestine after having refused to do multiple times.
Still, I’ll believe that Pete Buttigieg is going to East Palestine when he actually shows up.
