Trump blasted for ‘political stunt’ at site of Ohio train derailment – latest

Reporters on the ground in East Palestine report that crowds have gathered in the village in anticipation of Donald Trump’s visit to the village today.

Columbiana County, where East Palestine is located, voted overwhelmingly for Mr Trump in the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump has landed in Vienna, Ohio, approximately 36 miles north of East Palestine.

Mr Trump plans on visiting East Palestine and donating bottled water and cleaning supplies to the village during his stop.

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw appeared unwilling to provide details when pressed on why he lobbied against increased safety measures for the rail industry.

“Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), has told investigative news outlet The Lever that the severity of the Ohio crash might have been aggravated by the lack of ECP brakes.

During the PBS interview, Mr Bennet asked Mr Shaw about another rule change his company had opposed: “In November and December, Norfolk Southern met with federal regulators and pushed back against this proposed rule that would have, in most cases, mandated at least two crew members on trains. Why did Norfolk Southern spend so much money, millions upon millions of dollars, lobbying against it?””

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is reportedly travelling to East Palestine, Ohio on Thursday.

He will arrive the day after Donald Trump’s visit to the village.

Some residents of East Palestine, which is located in reliably red Columbiana County, Ohio, appear to be excited for former President Donald Trump to visit.

NBC News’ Henry Gomez shared images from the village ahead of Mr Trump’s arrival.

Donald Trump appears to be on his way to the village of East Palestine.

Few details of his visit were made public. It’s unclear where he’ll be or how long he plans on staying in Ohio.

Donald Trump will reportedly donate 13 pallets of bottled water as well as cleaning supplies to the village of East Palestine during his trip on Wednesday.

Mr Trump will be joined by East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, Senator JD Vance, Congressman Bill Johnson and other Republican state officials.

The Lincoln Project has released a new video focused on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and rail industry deregulation efforts Donald Trump made possible during his time in office.

The group released the video just hours before Mr Trump is set to visit the village.

The Biden administration has faced increasing scrutiny in the wake of the Ohio train derailment, as locals question “where’s Pete” and East Palestine’s mayor calls the president’s Ukraine visit a “slap in the face.”

Norfolk Southern was forced to vent and burn the train’s load of vinyl chloride, a hazardous material used in the manufacturing of certain plastics, leaving East Palestine residents worried about their health and the longterm effects it might have on their small community.

Since the 3 February derailment there have been criticisms, both locally and nationally, that the Biden administration was slow to move to address the disaster.

What exactly have Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg done since the train derailment, and are the criticisms warranted?

While Democrats including Hillary Clinton initially focused their fire on Russian disinformation and the role of conspiracies on social media, others pointed to a different phenomenon: the growing conservatism of the Rust Belt, the heartland of America’s manufacturing power.

It was here where progressives and Maga Republicans diagnosed the same problem: an entire region, spurned once too often by the shuttering of massive plants and the resulting regional economic collapses which followed, had turned towards the only politician unwilling to dismiss them as “flyover country” — Donald Trump. Even Democrats find themselves admitting that Mr Trump successfully painted himself as a hero of America’s working class, and in particular a hero of the kinds of blue collar union workers whose families had voted Democrat for years, maybe even decades.

That was the embarrassed anger which was evident whenever progressives and even some centrist Democrats noted that Ms Clinton’s campaign had failed to reach out to and campaign alongside labour unions in Michigan, or even worse, failed to even show up at all in Wisconsin. After 2016, the question for the left was clear: had the Democratic Party sacrificed its connection to the working class, and in particular to unions, in favour of chasing the suburbanite Republicans and independents whom they wagered were turned off by Donald Trump’s caustic rhetoric?