The White House on Thursday defended its response to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, saying President Biden is satisfied with the federal government’s efforts to address the toxic chemical spill caused by the incident.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mr. Biden “is staying updated” on the efforts to clean up the spill, but also declined to say if he would travel to the region to survey the damage for himself.
She declined to say if such a visit was even being considered by White House officials.
“I think what folks should understand and folks, I think, should feel at ease is that the president has taken this very seriously. Hours after the derailment you saw a multi-agency reaction to this,” she told reporters at the daily White House press briefing.
She also declined to say whether Mr. Biden would talk with East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, who slammed the president’s trip this week to Ukraine instead of visiting his town as “a slap in the face.”
Asked why the president isn’t doing more to directly aid the residents of East Palestine, who are continuing to reel from potential chemical contamination, Ms. Jean-Pierre insisted the work of various government agencies is direct help from the president.
“Offering the assistance. Offering help is doing it directly. When you are seeing the federal government on the ground providing the assistance that is needed, that is doing it directly. They are doing it on the direction of the president,” she said.
Ms. Jean-Pierre also defended Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who traveled to East Palestine on Thursday after weeks of criticism from Republicans and Democrats for not heading to the derailment site sooner. The train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed on Feb. 3.
She said the attacks on Mr. Buttigieg were “pure politics” and made in bad faith.
Ms. Jean-Pierre also brought up former Trump administration Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, saying that no one asked her to resign when a chemical spill or transportation incident happened under her watch.
“There’s been a lot of bad-faith attacks on Secretary Buttigieg,” she said. “If you remember Elaine Chao, she was the head of the Department of Transportation and when there [were] these types of chemical spills, nobody was calling for her to be fired.”
The train was carrying at least five hazardous chemicals, and the accident forced officials to release toxic fumes to avoid an explosion.
One of the chemicals, vinyl chloride, has been linked to brain, lung and liver cancer. Authorities burned 20 rail cars containing the chemical and other hazardous materials.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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