The Strangest Thing About the Ohio Train Derailment

Welcome back to the Liz Wheeler Show. What is going on in Ohio? I grew up in Ohio. I grew up in the suburbs outside of Cincinnati. My parents still live there, my sisters, my brothers still live there. Just about all of my extended family live there. Tons of friends in the areand I’ve talked to a lot of them in the past couple days, and most of them have the same question about the train derailment that happened.  

Fortunately, not, not super near where my family is, but near a lot of other people in, east Palestine, Ohio, people are wondering what exactly happened and what is the ramification of what happened? Are we in harm’s way? What can we do to mitigate the harm? Are these news reports true? What led to this? So what I wanna do today is just establish what it is that we’re facing in Ohio.  

So that starts with establishing what happened and why, what happened, happened from the wreck of the train itself, how the train became derailed to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Guard to their response. Because remember the plumes that you saw in all these videos, we’re gonna show videos, we’re gonna show pictures.  

This was not something that just arbitrarily happened. This happened as a result of a government or a decision that was made by government agencies. So we’re gonna establish what happened, who’s responsible for it, what it means now that all of these chemicals are everywhere. They’re in the air, they’re potentially in the water, they’re impacting, already impacting animals, probably, I mean, that usually means that they also impact people. Animals have a lower threshold for harm and for death, but, they operate the same way that people do. So we’re gonna talk about exactly what’s going on here, and we’re gonna talk about one of the strangest aspects of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.  

And that is the media blacking it out. The media is completely silent on this. The, a a couple of news outlets have started talking about, it’s just a little bit, but if this was, if, if this was something, if this was an environmental disaster that was impacting like some rare species of bird or some arbitrary type of fish in a random river somewhere, the environmentalists would be up in arms about this. But this is not, this is not harming just animals.  

This is harming people. It’s clearly harming the environment, and yet all of these people who claim to be environmentalists are being completely silent. Why is that? We’re gonna talk about, that we’re gonna talk about why the government is belittling it and how this is actually extremely important to the presidential election in 2024. We’re gonna talk about why, because it might be one of the most pivotal events that we are going to look back on late next year as a deciding factor in the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. So let’s get to it.  

Before we get into the Ohio train derailment thing. This is tangentially related. We talked a little bit about this yesterday, but it’s worth repeating because all If you look on If you look on Facebook, if you look on Twitter, if you look in the comment sections on, on news websites, and if you talk to your friends, if you text with your friends, the topic, the political topic of the day, if you are, if you are a regular voter, perhaps on the right is the Ohio trained derailment.  

But it’s actually superseded by the talk about aliens still. So we had the Chinese by balloon. We had Biden not shoot that down until it went off the coast of Carolina. Then we had three more of these UFOs that Biden shot down. The Biden administration is now saying that they were balloons before they were, they refused to rule out extraterrestrials.  

And a lot of people, this is people on the left and the right. This is actually not, not on, not I guess a partisan thing, but a lot of people were talking about, oh, this is aliens. This is it. We’re under attack. And I said yesterday that that’s silly, that it’s not aliens. That the idea of little green men being aliens coming in in their flying saucers is a figment of the human imagination. This is like science fiction. That’s someone made up. It’s not that we have any evidence that that’s what so-called extraterrestrial life looks like. That’s literally just somebody’s science fiction imagination.  

And yet we believe this. A lot of people, a lot had a lot of people believe this. And here’s, here’s a point that I wanna add. This is a little addendum to my commentary on it yesterday, guys. The idea of aliens, or when a government official specifically quote unquote, refuses to rule out, rule out extraterrestrial life as the cause of these, I literally cannot roll my eyes hard enough because this is the biggest psyop ever. I repeat the biggest psyop ever.  

Anytime a government official suggests aliens or says some silly rhetorical unfalsifiable sentence, like, well, we can’t rule out anything at this point. Even extraterrestrials, they always do that at a time when the intelligence community is covering up some type of misbehavior that they are engaging in, always. Because for some reason, the idea of aliens is like crack to the American people. We’re all like, oh my gosh, life on other planets.  

The government’s hiding us, this from us. What can we deduce? What is happening? Who’s coming after us? Aliens, aliens. Think about Area 51 for a second. Think about area 51. What was happening at the same time when Area 51 was, was at its at, its at its peak. When conspiracies about Area 51, were at its peak. What was happening? Well, the CIA was engaging in horrendous behavior. They were experimenting on American citizens, MK Ultra.  

So the intelligence community in the military, they’re, they’re complicit in this too. They want to distract the American people. So what do they do? Well, you just drop these little hints of extraterrestrial, right, of extra terrestrial life. Maybe this is a flying saucer. Maybe there’s aliens. Maybe the government is hiding that. And what do people do? Both eyeballs over to the alien stuff and both eyeballs away from the wrongdoing by the intelligence community, look, I know that I’m gonna say something that a lot of you who are really into this alien stuff won’t like, and you know, I love you.  

You know I love you, but I gotta say it here. One of the reasons that the American people, that citizens, this is probably not just true of American people. This is true of anybody. One of the reasons that people are so obsessed with the idea of aliens is because we crave as human beings something greater than ourselves.  

We, we crave something in the great beyond. And what is that? That we crave? We crave God. And when we don’t fill that void properly with God, that void is filled by something else. That void is filled, hopefully not by something evil, which has pretty much been the topic of what we’ve been talking about culturally for the past few days. But it can also be filled with fantasy and fiction and imagination that somehow satisfies or satiates that longing that we have for something greater than ourself life other than life on earth.  

That is what so many people in our country, unknowingly, unwittingly, why they become so engaged with the idea of extra extraterrestrial life. Again, remember, whenever a government official says something about, says something about aliens, it’s generally an unfalsifiable proposition. We can’t prove that this isn’t aliens. I’m not confident in, in denying that this is aliens.  

Okay? Are you confident in denying that it was your grandmother? Like you can’t you, that it’s an unfalsifiable proposition, it’s a rhetorical fallacy and it’s just intended to distract you, because guess what you’re not talking about anymore? Oh, that’s right. You’re not talking about the Chinese spy balloon. You’re talking about aliens. Aliens. That’s what they want you to talk about, clearly they also don’t want you to talk about the Ohio train derailment.  

This is quite the story. I have a ton of family in Ohio. I was born and raised in Ohio, right outside of Cincinnati. I have a lot of family that still live there. My parents still live there, I have extended family. My grandparents also live in Ohio. A lot of my childhood friends, through high school live in Ohio as well. I’ve talked to a lot of them about what’s happening.  

They’re not, they’re not right in this immediate zone of danger. It’s about Cincinnati’s about four or five hours away from East Palestine, Ohio, which is where this train derailed. But there’s a lot of concern. And the theme of all these conversations that I’ve had with my family is questions. People wanna know what actually happened, what caused what happened? What are we facing? Are we in harm’s way? What do we do to mitigate these, these harmful side effects that these poisonous chemicals that were released are going to have on our lives and on our families and on our pets? 

And so what I wanna do today is I want to establish why, what happened, happened, and what, what is going on, what, what we can do moving forward. Okay? So let’s start here by taking a look at two pictures from East Palestine, Ohio. One is from the air.  

And this photo shows the big plume. This shows the explosion, this black smoke, not only, not only billowing upwards towards the sky, but also the cloud that it created, showing how quickly this chemical burn disseminated, right? This picture, I think, has been shocking to a lot of people. It looks like something that, it looks like something from a war zone. It doesn’t look like something that should happen in our country.  

That’s the picture of it from the air. And we have another photo of it from the ground. This is a picture of the smoke when you’re on the ground in East Palestine. It kind of reminds you of what it looked like. Some of the photos, at nine 11, not to compare, not to compare this to nine 11, but the extent of the contamination in the air by these, by this thick, black, choking smoke.  

It’s striking since the media is blacking this out, and journalists across the country seem completely disinterested in this, it’s been left to citizen journalists on the ground to document what they’re experiencing. And this is a compilation of some of the things that citizens near East Palestine have experienced since this so-called controlled burn. Take a look at this.  

Massive train derailed Friday, 20 of them carried hazardous materials as flames lit up the sky in northeastern Ohio. The evacuation order is in place for anyone within a mile radius of the crash site. These aren’t, these aren’t storm clouds, this is the, it burned off in East Palestine. This is not storm clouds. Look at it.  

Officials are claiming that the air and water are safe. Residents say they can still smell chlorine. They’ve complained about their eyes watering when they go outside. And one woman says the noxious air killed her chickens out of nowhere. He just started coughing really hard and just shut down and went very fast at all. These crows, I’m not kidding. This is within 10 miles of East Palestine. If you have not evacuated, please leave the area.  

So what exactly happened is on Friday, a train, a Norfolk Southern train essentially crashed. It went off the rails. And, this train was carrying tanker cars, tanker cars full of toxic chemicals, and some of these toxic chemicals leaked out of these tanker cars. So, before we even get to what happened next, I wanna address the question, well, why did this happen?  

How, how did this train go off the rails? Literally, not the, not just the phrase, how did this train go off the rails?, cuz this is a pretty serious accident to happen. We do hear about train accidents, but one carrying toxic chemicals. Could this have been prevented or was there some negligence that led to this? And the answer to that is it appears that that there was some negligence. The National Transportation Safety Board said that there were, preliminary indications of mechanical issues on an axle on one of these tanker cars.  

So the axle was broken. In fact, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette showed that this train had traveled more than 20 miles with a broken axle. So five of the cars that derailed were filled with these toxic chemicals and the toxic chemicals spilled. And we do have a manifest of what, what chemicals were spilled. The probably the most famous one, the one that we’re all hearing about is vinyl chloride. We’re gonna talk about that more in in just a second. But some of the other ones are ethylene glycol, mono, butal, ether, ether, isoline, ethyl. 

These, these are serious chemicals, right? These are, these are not, this is not a joke. This is not your, your, this is not, this is not something that’s benign. This is hazardous material. These are combustible, poisonous, toxic carcinogens. In fact, this brings us back into a, into the, into a circle.  

Um, the same question that we were talking about before when I said, well, these plumes that we’re seeing in the sky, this is not the accident. The plumes that we saw in the sky was the deliberate choice of government officials to quote unquote stage this controlled burn, which is a very questionable decision for multiple reasons.  

There’s both the practical reasons and there’s the moral dilemma, the practical reasons, I want to show you probably the best overview of the science, about what happens with vinyl chloride. What vinyl chloride can do to people, what it means that it’s now dispersed into the atmosphere, into the air, into the water that I’ve seen. So take a look at this.  

This hasn’t been getting a lot of coverage and the coverage that it has been getting hasn’t been very good. So let’s talk about the trail derailment in East Palestine, Ohio East Palestine’s, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, almost halfway to Cleveland, Norfolk Southern has a rail line that goes right through town. And this derailment happened right on the edge outside of town on the border of pa in Ohio, of the cars that crash, fine for them contain vinyl chloride.  

It’s a monomer used to make PVC from the reporting on this has gotten vinyl chloride confused with poly vinyl chloride, the polymer made out of vinyl chloride. Now, the reason that this distinction’s really important is vinyl chloride is very hazardous and very flammable. Polyvinyl chloride is a plastic that’s used in like everything. The other thing about vinyl chloride is that it boils at eight degrees Fahrenheit.  

So it shipped in its liquid form, meaning that when these trains crashed and these started leaking, they weren’t just leaking liquid, but they were spewing boiling gas. So vinyl chloride is really toxic. OSHA has the permissible limit of how much you can be exposed to it during an eight hour shift as a one ppm part per million average over eight hours.  

So prior to this, the biggest spill of this chemical was a New Jersey where one train car and about 23,000 gallons of vinyl chloride were spilled, but it didn’t catch on fire. Now, this crash in Ohio has five train cars. These kinds of tanker cars can carry between 25 and 33,000 gallons. Let’s call it 250 to 250,000 pounds of vinyl chloride. That’s per train car, five train cars. There’s maybe a million pounds of this toxic chemical spilling into the ground and also boiling off into the air.  

But then it caught on fire. I think this is where the reporting is really bad because no one is mentioning what the byproduct of vinyl chloride burning is. Of the many byproducts of burning vinyl chloride. One of them is hydrogen chloride. Hydrogen chloride’s really unstable and latches onto water like just water vapor in the atmosphere. And that turns into hydrochloric acid. So right now, government officials, officials from the railroad, both the governor of Pennsylvania and Ohio are calling burning off the million pounds of this stuff a success.  

But not mentioning that, it means that we have hundreds of thousands of pounds of acid in the air potentially. Now, ever since engineering school, I’ve studied a lot of industrial accidents. I just find it really fascinating. And organizations like the Chemical Safety Board and TSB and OSHA all have like really good reports available to the public. Think as a designer, it’s really good to learn about mistakes. When looking at these kinds of industrial disasters across time, there are a couple things that are pretty universal across all of them.  

One, the responsible party in this coast, Norfolk Southern Railway, always plays down the reality of the situation. Politicians also just repeat the same lines, and then news outlets just repeat the same. So all we are hearing is the responsible party’s work.  

So that video was made by an engineer by the name of Nick Derm. He posted that on TikTok. And it’s gotten millions and millions of views because he very easily explains what happens when vinyl chloride, when vinyl chloride, what happens to it, what are the byproducts of vinyl chloride that it turns into hydrogen chloride, which latches onto water vapor, which turns into hydrochloric acid, which means that there’s acid, acid in the environment, in the air, and, potentially in the water.  

The vinyl chloride at least can potentially be in the water. In fact, it, the vinyl chloride has now been found in the Ohio River, in West Virginiand then all the way, all the way down southeast outside of Cincinnati as well, and on that Ohio, Kentucky border. So this is a really critical part of this story, perhaps one of the most important parts of this story, because this was not the result of something arbitrary like a natural disaster, nor was it the result of a horrible accident.  

This aspect of the story, the fact that there is now hydrogen chloride, the byproduct of vinyl chloride in our atmosphere, there spinal chloride in our water, that is the result of a deliberate decision made by the government. And when I say the government, I know that’s a vague term to use. I don’t mean made by our representatives in government.  

You know, we’re a representative republic. Everything can’t go to popular votes all the time to make every decision about government. So we send our, we send our elected officials to the government to represent us. We’re their constituents. They speak for us in, in our government, but that’s not who made this decision. The government officials that made this decision were part of the administrative state. This is the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. This is the National Guard, the military. These are not, these are not politicians that are accountable to us.  

The voter. These are unelected unaccountable bureaucrats that are virtually unfillable who have expressed, many of whom have expressed this is the deep state, right? This is the swamp. This is the administrative state, many of whom have expressed disdain towards us, towards the flyover states, towards the Midwest in general, towards the white working class people in Ohio, in East Palestine, who are impacted by this, and who these administrative state, deep state swamp creatures also express very radical leftist environmentalist ideology, climate change, alarmism, the whole underbelly of environmentalism is anti-human.  

And it’s a moral dilemma serious moral dilemma when unaccountable unelectable or unelected government bureaucrats who can’t be fired, we can’t revoke them out of office, are making these decisions, especially when they face a moral dilemma, like this, meaning their decision to burn the vinyl chloride was based on the possibility that it would combust the possibility that it would lead to an explosion.  

It wasn’t a certainty that the explosion would happen, it was a possibility. So that passive possibility was supplanted by the active choice of these administrative state bureaucrats to inflict harm on, on society, on this town, on the state, on our country, on the water and the air. And it was, it, it’s not a very cut and dry situation in the sense that it’s not, it’s not simply lesser of two evils.  

Oh, if we don’t burn this off, even though it will cause harm, the combustion will happen and it will cause more harm. It’s not a matter of, oh, it’s going to be 10 if we don’t take action, but we can reduce it to seven if we take action first. That’s not what this situation is, because there was no certainty that this explosion would happen. It was simply a possibility. And so the moral dilemma is, well, do you wait and do you, do you risk that possibility of an explosion of a catastrophe?  

Or do you inflict certain harm on people to mitigate a chance of something worse happening? And more importantly, is this a decision that we are comfortable leaving to the EPA? Is this a decision we’re comfortable leaving to the administrative state? If so, based on what, why would we give, why would we defer that trust? 

Why would we give the administrative state the benefit of the doubt to make a decision like this when the practicality of their decision, I mean, nick drum in that, in that video, laid it out more clearly and more precisely than I can, when the practical ramifications of their decision to stage this so-called controlled burn is so harmful, is so harmful that there’s now, there’s now hydro, chloric acid in the atmosphere and vinyl chloride in our water. The ramifications of this as the government is generally telling people that this is no problem.  

We knew what we were doing. You’re safe here. You’re not, you’re not in harm’s way citizens, the people of these towns, the people of East Palestine and other places outside of East Palestine are in Ohio are finding dead fish and dead animals, dead chickens. There’s even been reports of dead cattle miles and miles and miles away, meaning that this is already traveled. The blast radius of this, if you will, has already impacted to the point of death animals miles and miles away. So I wanna show this video. This is authorities in a river outside of East Palestine scooping up dead fish in the river.  

So a citizen journalist, maybe just a citizen, I don’t even know, I don’t even know if this person’s a reporter or not, is capturing officials in a river scraping away dead fish. Which means that this is not one fish or two fish or three fish. This is not one river. This is not right, right near the, right near where this spill happened. Not like, oh, well the rail car derailed just next to this and therefore this one river was contaminated. No, this is widespread.  

There’s a lot of wildlife that has been killed. So much so that the government feels it necessary to clear out the wildlife that has been killed, killed by the vinyl chloride and the other toxic chemicals that have been spilled by this car. This is a photo someone posted of chickens. They said this report says that, people who own personal chickens in and around East Palestine have suddenly seen their animals die.  

You can see this picture four dead chickens. It’s chilling actually, it’s really creepy. There has been a report that’s 70 miles east of East Palestine. The evidence of, you know, the vi vinyl chloride or perhaps the byproduct of the vinyl chloride has been seen on a car. You can see it both in this film that you see on the car, and then you can see the degrading of the plastic on the rear view mirror of the car, which I find to be, I find to be maybe the most chilling part at all.  

That it’s just eating away. It’s eating away at, at the material in this car, which means it’s not just gonna eat away at an animate objects, it’s going to eat away at us. But you can see, you can see this film everywhere. And anecdotally, people have been reporting up to 100 miles away that there’s been evidence of more fish dying, more chickens dying, perhaps even some cattle or some cattle dying.  

We haven’t seen photos of that. We haven’t had that corroborated, but that’s what citizen journalists on the ground are talking about right now. This is an environmental disaster, the likes of which we have never seen before in this country. And yet the climate change folks, the Greta Thunberg, where’s Greta Thunberg ? You’re supposed to care about the planet. You’re supposed to care about the environment. You’re supposed to care about the impacts that environmental disasters have on people who inhabit this planet.  

But where’s Greta? Where’s Al Gore? Where’s AOC? They’re silent, they’re absent. They don’t care if one sea turtle so much as inhales a plastic straw. You remember that viral photo that went around right of the sea turtle that had inhaled one plastic straw and it went in one side of the nose and out the other. We’re told the only answer to that is passing laws like they did in California that can actually send waitresses at restaurant to jail if they offer a straw, a plastic straw to a customer without the customer asking.  

First, we’re told that the only solution to the pollution that we see in our oceans is the green New Deal is socialism. That’s the only answer. Now, of course, when masks pollute the ocean to a greater extent than plastic straws, we don’t hear anything from the climate change criers. We don’t hear anything from the radical environmentalists, nothing at all. And likewise, it’s suddenly a non-issue. It’s suddenly a non-issue when we have the largest, most significant, most dangerous environmental disaster in United States history happening in East Palestine, Ohio. Nothing. 

You hear nothing from these people, nothing at all. Because they don’t care about people. Their climate change alarmism, their in radical environmentalism is a political ploy. They do not care about you. Their climate change. Alarmism is a religion. The Babylon Bee posted obviously a satirical headline that said, Pete Buttigieg, secretary of Transportation should be intimately involved in this.  

Pete Buttigieg promises to investigate Ohio Railway chemical spill for signs of racism. I saw that and I was like, oh, haha, that’s hilarious. You know, Pete Buttigieg, Mr. Diversity hire, all he cares about is, DEI in transportation, right? Bridges are racist. He told us everything’s racist. Pete Butta judged on the day that this the first work day, meaning on Monday when this was the big story in our country, this is when people were noticing their dead animals we’re seeing the ramifications of this when they were worried.  

Are we being told the truth? Are we safe? What’s going on here? Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, instead of going to the scene, instead of speaking about this, instead of answering questions that citizens of the United States have about what is going on, Pete Buttigieg goes on stage at a conference and complains that there are too many white people, too many white men who work in construction. I kid you not, take a listen. 

To work with your contractors, to work with your community colleges on building a workforce that reflects the community. We have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color that finally sees the project come to them. But everyone in the hard hats on that project looking like, you know, doing, doing the good paying jobs, don’t look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood, right? You can build community wealth that will help close wealth gaps in this country if we can tear down those barriers. But that happens at the delivery level.  

Pete Buttigieg is gonna take care of you. Don’t worry about your safety, don’t worry about your drinking water. Don’t worry about the potential for acid rain. Pete Buttigieg has got it all taken care of because the problem in our country, guys, is that construction workers are too white. Everything’s gonna be better once we get construction workers of different skin colors. That’s the Pete Buttigieg solution. This is, I say this as a joke, but this is not funny. This is what happens when an administration like the Biden administration hires Pete Buttigieg because he is gay.  

This is the diversity hire Pete Buttigieg resume that qualified him for this position was his biggest accomplishment before this was like a bike lane in South Bend, Indiana. You’re telling me that’s why the Biden administration put him in this position? No, the Biden administration put him in this position because they were virtue signaling. They were trying to elevate this, this politician Pete Buttigieg, because he is gay. That’s all. And this is Pete Buttigieg reaction to this. Meanwhile, the people of Ohio are being harmed and their government is responsible for this so-called controlled burn that disperse these chemicals in the atmosphere and in the water.  

And here’s the most significant point that I can make tonight. We can establish the questions that need to be asked and the questions that need to be answered. The questions that need to be asked are, who’s our responsibility? Was it to check the tanker car to make sure that it was op, that it was operating properly, that it didn’t have any broken pieces like the broken axle? Where did that process break down?  

The second question that we need to ask is, should we be allowing the administrative state, the EPA, the authority to make decisions, to actively harm us by burning something that wasn’t a certainty to explode? Had they not burned it? And who made that decision? Who signed off on that decision? And were they aware of the science? Did they know the practical ramifications of burning what they burned?  

And why are they telling people that this is safe? Why aren’t they warning people about the carcinogenic qualities of these chemicals? And what this means for obviously the chickens who are now dead, the fish who are floating, deceased in the rivers, the cattle that have reportedly died as a result of this? Is this going to harm small children? Is it going to harm babies? Should we all expect an outbreak of cancer and birth defects and infertility in the next 10 years?  

Is this gonna be an Aaron Brockovich situation all over again? Why should we take the word of the EPA? We know the questions that should be asked, but the most important point that I can make tonight is how, and it sounds crass. I know it sounds crass, and I’m, I’m sorry that it sounds crass. I’m sorry to reduce this to just politics, but this, what’s happening in Ohio will be one of the most pivotal events that impacts the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.  

Who are the people in Ohio who are hurt by this? They’re white working class Americans. They are the forgotten man. Once again, they’re the reason Donald Trump was elected in 2016 because Donald Trump looked at the white working class man and said, you underserved. You have been forgotten. You have been ignored, and you’re suffering for it.  

And I hear you and I see you, and I wanna fix it for you. That’s why Donald Trump got elected. Biden came into office and he’s ignoring the white working class Again, these are the people in Ohio who are being hurt white working class, and the Democrats don’t care because they’re white working class. The Democrats only care about people when they have a sexual orientation that can, that can, you know, that can cause them to be hired as Secretary of Transportation. The Democrats only care about people if they’re minorities, if they have a certain color skin that can make Democrats feel like, oh, we’re championing minorities.  

A white working class American Democrats don’t care about. And so let me tell you what’s gonna happen here. Let’s go. Let me tell you what’s gonna happen. Remember what happened in Florida after the hurricane when Ron DeSantis took action? Governor Ron DeSantis took to action and made sure that communities around Florida that were harmed by the hurricane had oil that they needed.  

There was a video that went viral right around that time of a black man in Florida saying, I’m gonna vote for DeSantis. Why? Because he made sure that my community had what it needed in the wake of this hurricane. And Democrats hated that video because it showed that DeSantis was serving his people. He wasn’t playing identity politics. He wasn’t distributing oil based on DEI. He was doing what he should do as the governor and serving the people as the chief executive of the state.  

That’s exactly what’s going to happen in Ohio for 2024. Whichever politicians stand up for this travesty, stand up for not for this travesty. Stand up in the face of this travesty for the people. Investigate this, support this. Prevent it from happening again. Connect people with resources. Uncover corruption. That’s who Ohio’s going to vote for in 2024. Whichever party steps up, whichever politicians in whichever party, this is what’s going to make a decision or what’s going to make a difference in how Ohio votes in 2024.  

I know it’s crass to reduce this to politics, and I’m sorry to do that, but this is simply the reality of the situation. These, these voters, the white working class voters are perhaps the most important demographic in elections going forward. Senator JD Vance from Ohio sent out the following statement, about this East Palestine trained derailment. He said, like every Ohioan, I’m horrified by the Norfolk Southern Train crash in East Palestine and the images we’ve seen coming from northeast Ohio.  

One week ago, local and state officials determined that to avoid a catastrophic explosion, a controlled release, a controlled release of vinyl chloride would take place. The release is the source of the frightening plumes of black smoke that have made their way around social media. While those plumes of smoke are now gone, many questions remain in the air and water.  

Are the air and water safe for residents? So far, we have been told Vance said that the air and drinking water tests performed by the state and federal environmental protection agencies, the Ohio National Guard and Norfolk Southern have been encouraging. We continue to monitor environmental reports from multiple agencies about the quality of the air and water in that region. I’ve heard alarming anecdotes about contaminated waterways in effect on wildlife. I encourage anyone with credible reports of environmental harms to contact my office. In the meantime, we will continue to engage with the relevant agencies and monitor the situation in the region.  

I have two comments on this. First of all, JD Vance is one of the only politicians who is probably the most high profile politician who is speaking out about this. And for that, I commend him. That’s a good thing. He should be representing his constituents in Ohio. But here’s my warning for Senator Vance. Do not defer to the EPA. Do not take the word of the executive agencies, of the federal government, the administrative state for it. Do not base your analysis of this situation on what Biden’s agencies, his radical environmentalist agencies are telling you, because their agenda does not align with your agenda. Their agenda is not pro-human.  

These are the same people from the Environmental Protection Agency, from the executive agencies that told us that the error around New York City after nine 11 was safe. It wasn’t. It caused a lot of people to get lung cancer and die. These are the same people that tell us that the Covid vaccine is okay for babies. Do you want to take their word for it? Don’t belittle this situation. Don’t take Norfolk Southern’s word for it. They’re just thinking about the liability of the thing.  

They could be destroyed by this if they’re held accountable for it. If this harms people and people are allowed to sue them, they’re the responsible party. Don’t take Norfolk’s Southern word for it. Don’t take the government’s word for it. Don’t take the EPAs word for it and don’t belittle the situation. Don’t be condescending to the people of Ohio. The plumes were frightening, but they’re gone now.  

Is the water safe? We think so. If you take this seriously, this will impact the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, which is important because it is your role, your responsibility, and your duty to take care of the people of Ohio who you serve in the United States Senate. This is not just true for JD Vance. I’m not saying this just to critique Vance. I’m saying this because this is important for who’s going to control the White House in 2024.  

Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.