East Palestine has shown what true government incompetence has come to in this country. So many are to blame for this catastrophe. It seems as though those culpable have done everything they can to distance themselves from this tragedy in the first place. This notion is seeming to ring true for the President of our great nation, Joe Biden. Biden has endured so much flack for essentially turning a blind eye to an even that rocked America’s heartland.

Sympathy for Biden’s administration has almost completely run dry at this point. I have never seen a party try to distance themselves from their leader as much as the democrats seem to be doing right now. Let’s face it. He is extremely hard to root for. I really want him to succeed as it would help the country; however, it feels like every waking moment of his presidency is just watching an old man struggle to keep it together. It is a revolving door of big-time opportunities that he completely misses.

Just a few weeks after his ineptitude was cast on full display in front of the world with his hesitancy in regards to taking action against the Chinese with the spy balloon debacle, he has entered the news once

again. This time at odds with his own citizens. Biden was seen days after the explosion visiting the war-ravaged country of Ukraine. Now, by no means am I ridiculing the president for supporting Ukraine in their time of need. Hell, I wrote an entire article saying US politicians need to be doing more. However, the timing of this visit could not have been worse.

I understand that his agenda and travel officials would have a whale of a time attempting to postpone this trip, but the optics just could not have been worse. Biden has noted that members of his administration were on the grounds of disaster just two hours post-derailment. What is it they say? Seeing is believing. Biden can boast that his administration is doing everything they can to appease this sad situation, but until he is seen standing by these common folk, belief will continue to be decimated. In the world of politics, people’s eyes are the most pivotal to appeal to. Donald Trump knows this.

The 45^th president, Donald Trump, was seen visiting ground zero just a few weeks removed from the disaster. He seized the opportunity to capitalize on a gift from Joe Biden. Trump was seen giving out his signature red hats and water bottles labeled with his namesake “TRUMP”. While this is obviously a publicity to stunt to gain traction for his upcoming presidential bid, it does not matter. It flat out does not. What matters in the eyes of the American public is that Donald Trump was there, and Joe Biden was not.

SNL mocked the former president in their weekly “comedy” show. This is playing right into the hands of Donald Trump. He is using the little relevancy that SNL has left to try to publicize himself in any light they are willing to paint him. Trump knows the old saying, “No press is bad press”. One thing SNL and the rest of Trump’s critics cannot deny is that he was there when no one else was. Even though people hold much contempt for the former president, it cannot be denied how calculated and genius this strategy was.

As for Biden, he tried to save face of this disaster by sending his Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, into the fire (no pun intended). This was smart. Buttigieg is a respected member of Biden’s cabinet. He does take strides, albeit small at this point, to try to show the current administration still cares for the working class citizen. However, this still feels like a slap in the face for this town. It has been almost three weeks, and the president still has come nowhere near East Palestine. Although the intentions were there by sending Buttigieg, it was received as another fruitless attempt at assuaging anger.

The pinnacle of this fiasco came this week during a Joe Biden press conference. Biden was asked if he has been in contact with the Mayor of East Palestine to which he responded that he had a “Zoom” call earlier in the week. One problem, the mayor claims that no Zoom call has occurred. He did acknowledge that he has had some contact with the White House, but a zoom call? Never happened. One of two things must be true because of this. Either he is lying to the media or he actually thinks he talked to the mayor. At this point, I would be hard pressed to tell you which one would be more demoralizing for us as a country. One thing I do know for certain is that support is dwindling, and I believe people are starting to see the writing on the wall.