Pete's honeymoon is over

“Pete Buttigieg has taken a lot of bullets for the president on this,” one senior Democrat said Wednesday, insisting on anonymity to talk about a crisis that the person was not authorized to discuss.

[...]

Buttigieg was prepared to speak about the incident if asked, according to the DOT official — but for 10 days, no interviewer asked him.

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Buttigieg acknowledged in a CBS News interview Tuesday that he “could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.”

  Politico

I might have thought that would have been a lesson learned while he was a mayor in Indiana. He's done a lot of time on Fox News. Surely he knows the character of MAGA. They'd already been debasing him about the airline industry scheduling fiasco and FAA computer failure. He should have known to get out in front of this much bigger disaster and not wait to be asked to talk about it. Lesson learned, indeed. Hope it's not too late.

Three people in Buttigieg’s orbit admit to being exasperated by the furor, saying nobody asked him about the derailment in any of the 23 media interviews he conducted during the first 10 days after the accident. Then critics lambasted him for not speaking sooner.

Since then, conservative media outlets have used images of the Feb. 3 wreck — including the flames, plumes of black smoke and piles of dead fish — to lambaste his oversight of rail safety. They’ve also criticized his failure to visit the crash site.

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The Ohio derailment comes after a series of other transportation-related snarls that have happened on Buttigieg’s watch, including a threatened nationwide rail strike, airline scheduling meltdowns and a Federal Aviation Administration computer failure that grounded flights nationwide. These have brought him unsparing criticism from GOP lawmakers and conservative media outlets, which have portrayed him as overwhelmed by or detached from the job — and mocked his interest in issues such as racial justice and climate change.

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Fox News’ prime-time coverage of the derailment on Tuesday included a Photoshopped image portraying him as a suit-wearing bicyclist grinning in front of the wreckage. Former President Donald Trump weighed in during a visit to East Palestine on Wednesday, telling reporters, “Buttigieg should’ve been here already.”

Come on, folks. You know you can't win the critics wars. Expect it. Deal with it.

Employees of both DOT and EPA were at the scene within hours after the derailment, as were crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board. The heads of DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration and the department’s hazardous materials agency visited East Palestine on Wednesday, though their trip was upstaged by Trump’s appearance.

If you're going to go political - go straight to Biden. Which, of course, they have.

[A] White House spokesperson, also called it misguided for Republicans to expect Buttigieg to personally rush to the site of a train wreck.

“It’s like them pretending they think the State Department takes point on rescuing people in the water during hurricanes instead of the Coast Guard,” Bates said. “Case in point, under the last administration EPA was also in the lead on similar derailments.”

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More than 1,000 train derailments happen in the U.S. during a given year, and Transportation secretaries don’t normally go to the scene. Rail safety veteran Bob Lauby said that in his 23 years at the NTSB and the Federal Railroad Administration, he remembers just one time when a secretary visited the site — and it was 30 years ago, when the deadliest incident in Amtrak’s history killed 47 people near Mobile, Ala.

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“During the initial response phase, I’ve followed the norm of staying out of the way of the independent NTSB,” [Buttigieg] tweeted Wednesday. “Now that we’re into the policy phase, I’ll be visiting.”

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Buttigieg also sent a scathing letter to the CEO of Norfolk Southern, the railroad involved in the disaster, for what he called the “vigorous resistance by your industry to increased safety measures.”

Buttigieg’s supporters have accused Republicans of showing only newfound interest in rail safety, noting that Trump’s administration had shelved an Obama-era rule that would have required faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials. (The rule would not have applied to the train that derailed in Ohio, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy wrote on Twitter last week.) Trump’s DOT also ended regular rail safety audits of railroads and killed a pending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members.

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[W]hen Norfolk Southern or EPA tell communities the air and water are safe, people don’t believe them.

That skepticism hasn’t kept [Michael] Regan, the EPA chief, from getting the warm welcome from Republicans that has eluded Buttigieg. Those include DeWine and others who have met Regan during his two trips to East Palestine.

Regan isn't gay.

Buttigieg met [at the derailment site on Thursday] with U.S. Department of Transportation investigators who, according to Buttigieg's office, were on the ground in East Palestine hours after the train derailed on Feb. 3 near the Pennsylvania border.

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Nearly three weeks later, the burned-out husks of several tanker cars sit off to the side of the railway that travels directly through downtown East Palestine. A strong odor of chemicals permeates the air.

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None of the cars exploded in the derailment, Keltz said. But days after the crash, Norfolk Southern conducted a controlled burn of vinyl chloride to avoid an explosion, releasing hydrogen chloride and the toxic gas phosgene into the air.

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Buttigieg in the wake of the derailment is calling on Norfolk Southern and other rail companies to expedite the implementation of DOT 117 train cars, which are designed to prevent the release of the car's contents if something happens. Companies must have those cars in place by 2029, but the transportation officials want to see it happen sooner.

  MSN

I heard someone discuss the issue with the braking systems that companies have been resisting. The new proposal for brakes would be a system where each and every car has brakes that are all applied in emergency situations, rather than stacking up like dominoes and derailing.

Buttigieg during his visit to this Ohio town near the Pennsylvania border sought to address criticism from some that he should have visited sooner. In a visit to the village on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump described the federal response to the train derailment as a "betrayal."

When questioned by reporters, Buttigieg said he was trying to strike a fine balance between being a public-facing official and giving NTSB room to investigate the incident.

Yes, Trump went to a McDonald's and bought everybody there "a nice meal," and gave people "good" Trump water "and some lesser water." Very helpful. Still, Biden and Buttigieg left themselves open by not visiting the site sooner. I know Biden was busy getting his trip to Ukraine lined up, but you can't turn your back on middle America and expect not to be assaulted for it.

Buttigieg expressed regret for not tweeting about the crash until a week and a half after it happened. "I felt strongly about this and could have expressed that sooner. Again, I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role I don’t have but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt in this community," he said.

Too little, too late, Pete.

“To any national political figure who has decided to get involved with the plight of East Palestine, I have a simple message, which is I need your help," he added. "If you’re serious about this, there is more that we can do to prevent more communities from going through this.”

In addition to stronger rail cars, Buttigieg wants federal officials to increase the maximum fine for railroads that violate safety rules. The figure is currently $225,455, which Buttigieg previously called a "rounding error" for companies that rake in billions of dollars.

Buttigieg also wants Congress to look at how trains are classified when they transport hazardous materials through states. The Norfolk Southern train was not considered a high-hazard flammable train, meaning it could pass through Ohio without any notification to the state.

[...]

"What we have seen is that industry goes to Washington, and they get their way," Buttigieg said.

You want to talk about that rail workers strike the Biden administration shut down, Pete? Those guys that have to work long hours with no - zero - sick days, and too few crew on board, for instance?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What caused the derailment? The interim report.

UPDATE 02/24/2023:

Too bad he didn't have some Trump air.  

UPDATE 02/25/2023:

That would be James Comer.