Misplaced Blame From The Mainstream Media

The Democrats have reached the point where if President Biden trips going up the stairs on Air Force One, it’s President Trump’s fault. He obviously made the steps too high. We are seeing this dynamic at work in the aftermath of the train disaster in Ohio. Not only has the Biden administration been slow to respond, some Democrats and media are blaming President Trump for the crash. The fact that up until January, the Democrats for two years controlled Congress and the Presidency does not seem to play into their thought process. Anyway, The Washington Examiner posted an article on Saturday that provides clarification on what is being said.

The article reports:

Facts are stubborn things. So, the best way for Democrats to push a good partisan narrative is to ignore them entirely.

That’s what many on the Left are doing right now in the aftermath of a disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. They’re attempting to pin the blame for the ensuing chemical disaster on former President Donald Trump and “deregulation” more broadly, arguing that the Trump administration repealed an Obama-era safety rule that could’ve prevented this tragic accident.

…Progressive voices ranging from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the White House to the popular “Pod Save America” hosts and huge liberal social media pages such as Occupy Democrats have made this accusation or insinuation.

…There’s just one problem: It’s complete nonsense. We can debate the pros and cons of that regulation, but it has nothing to do with the current controversy. As a simple matter of fact, it would not have applied to the train that derailed in East Palestine.

You don’t have to take my word for it; take it from the New York Times, hardly a pro-Trump or anti-regulation source.

This is the major quote from the article:

“Since the Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio, some lawmakers and activists have pointed to a 2015 safety regulation adopted by the Obama administration as an example of the changes that they say are needed to make railroads safer. … But after lobbying by the railroad industry, the Trump administration repealed the rule in 2018,” the New York Times reports . Yet it goes on to admit that: “Had the rule remained in effect, it would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine.”

The New York Times’s source for this is Jennifer Homendy, a Democrat and head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article. It is quite possible that some regulations need to be looked at in an effort to prevent another ecological disaster like the one that occurred in Ohio, but no regulations impacting the train involved have been changed.