It’s been a while since we checked in on the hapless Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
Since his ineffective and tone-deaf response to the East Palestine train derailment, he has come under official scrutiny for his jet-setting lifestyle.
The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) internal watchdog is opening an audit into Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg over his extensive use of private jets, the agency confirmed to Fox News Digital on Monday.The DOT Inspector General investigation comes roughly two months following a Fox News Digital report that showed Buttigieg, who has repeatedly argued in favor of aggressive action to combat climate change, has taken at least 18 flights using taxpayer-funded private jets since taking office in early 2021. Flight records reviewed by Fox News Digital aligned with Buttigieg’s internal calendar obtained at the time by government watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT).”After Americans for Public Trust helped determine Secretary Buttigieg’s excessive use of taxpayer-funded government jets, we are pleased to see that his air travel is now under investigation,” APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital on Monday.”Everyday Americans have faced unprecedented flight cancelations and disruptions, but Buttigieg has continued to fly private, even on a Coast Guard plane and even when commercial options were readily available.”
And his team certainly has not resolved the issues surrounding the train derailments around the country.
A train derailed near a village in central Maine this weekend, resulting in a fire in the surrounding forest.
Officials say the derailed fright train cars were carrying lumber and wiring. Other carts were carrying hazardous materials but were unaffected by the derailment and the fire, a spokesperson for the Canadian Pacific Kansas City rail network said. Officials said the derailment likely was caused by a washout of ice and debris on the tracks.The Rockwood Fire and Rescue Department said the train derailed north of Rockwood, a village in Somerset County that borders Moosehead Lake – the largest body of fresh water in the state.Officials at the scene assessed the derailment and said the “hazardous materials are not at risk of leaking and are not at risk of catching fire,” Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry spokesperson Jim Britt said in a statement.
This incident led Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to brand Buttigieg as “a toddler playing with his first train set.”
The firebrand Republican added: “Buttigieg is running this country’s rail system like a toddler playing with his first toy train set.”Since being shared online, Bobert’s comment has been viewed more than 733,000 times.As of Sunday morning, Buttigieg has not responded to Boebert or shared any posts about the derailment on Twitter or his other social media accounts.
Here is where I am going to have to disagree with the Congresswoman. My son got his first train set at 18 months. He took good care of all his “Thomas the Train” collection, to the point that we donated them to the church pre-school when he moved on to the next phase of his life.
We can only begin to hope that Buttigieg develops a smidgen of that kind of concern for the nation’s transportation system. Right now, the only achievement the Transportation Secretary has unlocked is that everyone knows who he is…and not for good reasons.
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