Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) joined the chorus of voices blasting Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s response to the East Palestine, Ohio, toxic train derailment Tuesday, saying that he wouldn’t rule out impeaching the cabinet member over the incident.
“They should have shown up immediately,” Collins told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to the Department of Transportation.
“Any time we have a problem, as far as small businesses are concerned, you get right to the scene and see exactly what’s going on, so you can assess the problem” and “figure out what the solution is,” the freshman lawmaker added.
“Yeah, they sent people up there, but … this thing was a major catastrophe and something like that garners the head of the department showing up,” Collins went on.
Buttigieg has faced criticism for waiting until 10 days after the Feb. 3 accident to issue his first public statement on the calamity that forced the evacuation of residents within a mile of the accident site as a fire emitting toxic smoke burned.
The release of vinyl chloride, shown to cause cancer at high levels of exposure, and other chemicals into the air and ground has raised serious concerns about the future health of residents.
Buttigieg finally toured the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment Feb. 23 – almost three weeks after the accident.
Collins claims the former South Bend, Ind., mayor was “bent on not going,” and he accused Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, of being more concerned with promoting “woke culture” than improving the nation’s infrastructure.
“That’s just another, in my opinion, another clear example of this agency and the fact that they have got their sights set on stuff other than trying to improve the infrastructure of this country,” Collins said. “And that’s the woke culture that this guy is promoting.”
“If we identified the problem, that’s the problem,” Collins said. “We’re more in tune with trying to fix culture problems and be woke than we are fixing transportation infrastructure problems.”
The Georgia Republican added that the transportation secretary “knows nothing about the infrastructure and transportation problems in this country” and said he does not “think anything is off the table” when asked about impeaching Buttigieg.
“The solution is … you get rid of Pete Buttigieg and get somebody in there that knows what they’re doing and what they’re talking about,” Collins continued.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Buttigieg defended his department’s response to the train derailment.
“Beginning in the first hours when USDOT arrived on-site, and continuing for as long as it takes, our department is working alongside our administration partners to ensure that the residents in East Palestine are made whole and Norfolk Southern is held accountable,” Buttigieg wrote.
Buttigieg also hit back at claims that his department is pursuing a “woke” agenda during an interview on CNN Tuesday, saying that he “would not call the Brent Spence Bridge a ‘woke initiative,’” citing the DOT’s $3 billion dollar project to rehabilitate and reconfigure the bridge spanning the Ohio River.
Earlier this month, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) also suggested that Buttigieg could be impeached over the derailment if he doesn’t resign.
“I hope [Buttigieg] does resign, and if he doesn’t, you know, there’s a long list of impeachment criteria. I never would have thought we’d see a point where we need to impeach a secretary of transportation, but doggone, how many failures have to happen on his watch before we call it?” Davidson said during an interview with conservative outlet Real America’s Voice.