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Gabbard attacks Biden response

Says president failed people of East Palestine

CANFIELD — Tulsi Gabbard, a Fox News contributor who was the keynote speaker at the Mahoning County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner, said President Joe Biden and his administration have done a poor job reacting to the East Palestine railroad disaster.

“It goes beyond a failing grade,” Gabbard said Friday of the Democratic president.

Gabbard, who visited East Palestine a few weeks ago, added: “To be able to look into the eyes of the people who have grown up there, spent their whole lives there and understand how forgotten they feel. Like they don’t matter because many of them didn’t vote for Joe Biden. They don’t matter because they live in middle America, in a town that nobody has really heard of, is really heartbreaking. Every single American deserves the service and care from our federal officials — same as everybody else.”

Gabbard said she didn’t watch Thursday’s U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing on the East Palestine derailment at which Alan Shaw, CEO of Norfolk Southern, the railroad company responsible for the disaster, testified.

But she said: “I thought it sent the wrong message that the CEO failed to show up on multiple occasions in East Palestine for the people in that community and then only went to show up when Washington basically told him he had to.”

Shaw testified Thursday that he has visited East Palestine multiple times since the Feb. 3 derailment.

Gabbard had high praise for the village’s residents, saying, “The people there are incredible, resilient, proud of their community and forward looking. My concern is that Norfolk Southern and the federal government will forget about them once the headlines move on. That’s something that I and many others look forward to continuing to do is to remind those in power of the challenges that they’re suffering today and will likely suffer for some time to come to make sure they are not left behind and forgotten.”

Gabbard was the keynote speaker at the party’s Lincoln Day dinner at Waypoint 4180 in Canfield. The event was a sellout with 500 tickets purchased.

Gabbard unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, after serving eight years in the U.S. House, representing a district in Hawaii. She grew increasingly conservative and openly critical of the Democratic Party in recent years. Gabbard became an independent in October. She campaigned for and endorsed several Republicans ahead of last year’s election. Most of them lost.

Asked about Biden, who she endorsed in 2020, Gabbard said: “He has been more than a huge disappointment in every respect (on) so many issues on domestic policy, certainly on foreign policy and he has failed to deliver on the promises that he made to be a uniting president for all Americans ultimately.”

Gabbard added: “The repercussions of the policy decisions that they’re making are only driving us apart as Americans, using identity politics and other things really for political gain and not caring about the destructive impact that those policies are having on us.”

Using the same “identity politics” phrase Feb. 24 on Fox News, she said at the time: “Let’s be clear how serious of a problem this is. It’s based on genetics, race, based on your blood, your genes, and where do we see that connection? Well, these are the same geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This should be something sickening and alarming to every single Democrat and every single American.”

Gabbard also said Friday that people’s “rights and freedoms are being undermined by very powerful positions within our government as well as in the monopolies in big tech.”

During her time in Congress, Gabbard was a frequent guest on Fox News and was hired in November to be a paid contributor, which also includes serving as a fill-in host for Tucker Carlson on his show.

Reports earlier this week stemming from a lawsuit against Fox News show that after Republican Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidency to Biden, Carlson and others at Fox News privately were very critical of Trump, but still repeated his false claims that there was widespread election fraud and that he actually won the election.

Asked Friday about that, Gabbard, who was interviewed as recently as Thursday by Carlson on Fox News, said: “To be honest, I haven’t been tracking that very closely. The concerns that I have been and continue to be focused on are those that are fundamental to who we are as a country and protecting our democracy and protecting our freedom.”

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