Fox’s Bret Baier notes recent ‘political’ attacks on Buttigieg amid train derailment 

Fox News anchor Bret Baier mentioned the political attacks being leveled against U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg amid an ongoing environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio, following a catastrophic train derailment in the area.

“There is this political moment and there is a lot of criticism of the transportation secretary,” Baier said, pointing to an article in Politico that reported Buttigieg would visit the area on Thursday and referencing, “‘It is exceedingly rare for a transportation secretary to visit the site of a train derailment, especially one that resulted in no fatalities.’”

Baier said that framing was “fair” and “accurate.”

“There were train derailments in the Trump administration that actually had fatalities that didn’t have a visit by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao,” the anchor said. “But this seems to have some momentum about the administration and its reaction to this derailment in particular.”

Since the derailment earlier this month, a number of high-profile politicians and administration officials have visited East Palestine, including former President Trump and current EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

Republicans and conservative critics have pointed out that President Biden has not yet visited the area himself and knocked him for instead visiting war-torn Ukraine as part of a previously-undisclosed trip to Europe earlier this week.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called Buttigieg “MIA” on the incident and urged on Biden to fire his transportation secretary, while Trump said “when they heard I was coming they all came” when he visited the area Wednesday.

The Politico article noted that in a recent interview with CBS, Buttigieg acknowledged he should have spoken about the disaster sooner.

“I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set, but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me,” Buttigieg said during that interview.

While on the ground Thursday, Buttigieg hit back at Trump saying “one thing Trump can do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had nothing to do with it, if he had nothing to do with it and they did it in his administration against his will, maybe he can come out and say that he supports us moving in a different direction.”