The Biden administration's response to the East Palestine train derailment is another example of how its reactions come "too little, too late," Rep. Dan Meuser said on Newsmax Thursday.
"I think this tends to define this administration," the Pennsylvania Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," offering comments as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was touring the small Ohio community, arriving a day after former President Donald Trump's visit.
"This is a terrible disaster," Meuser said of the accident and subsequent release of several dangerous chemicals into the environment, including vinyl chloride. "The people there are afraid to shower. Farmers are afraid that people won't want to buy their products."
The administration is "slow, they're late, and they are indecisive," Meuser added. "That's what sums up very much this Biden administration. There's no one in charge."
He further called Buttigieg an "incompetent Cabinet secretary."
"I was in the governor's Cabinet," he said. "I know what difference that can make."
Buttigieg is a secretary that "checks all the boxes and has no experience at all" and when that is combined with a "completely indecisive president of the United States or CEO" and leadership is absent, "this is what happens," said Meuser.
And when being "woke, all their wokeness" is added in, "it shows they're just completely out of touch. They don't even like rural America," the congressman continued.
He also took offense to comments made by The New York Times' Maggie Hagerman, who said Trump would not have visited East Palestine if it wasn't a district that hadn't supported him politically.
She also told CNN Wednesday that visiting East Palestine was a way for him to campaign without having to incur the expense of a large rally.
"It's ridiculous," he said. "President Trump is very in touch with America because he loves America. When he says he was putting America first, he meant it."
The Biden administration, in comparison, is "all about blame, blame, blame," said Meuser.
"Don't they know that that runs counter to American intuition?" he said. "Don't they know that we're a nation of, by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and working hard, that can yield success?"
But, Meuser said, "that woke mob in this Biden Administration that puts their ideology well ahead of the people or outcomes. It shows how out of touch they are."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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