Tuesday morning on WarRoom: Battleground, Stephen K. Bannon welcomed The Star News Network’s CEO and Editor and Chief, Michael Patrick Leahy to the show to discuss Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s contradictory statements after a train derailment released contaminated air into the East Palestine region.
Bannon: I got to bring in Leahy first. Michael Patrick Leahy, The Ohio Star. I got Jeffrey Clark, who is President Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Force in the Justice Department, where the real deals get done. Leahy my head is blowing up.
And I don’t want to say we forced this from the WarRoom by being on the DeWine and these guys, but it’s interesting that all of sudden after we hammered them for a couple of days, they pop up and have a press conference.
But are they telling people now you should be drinking bottled water a week after? They didn’t do this before. Is this the first warning? And he’s sitting there going, yeah, I think the air is bad, stay indoors. What’s going on here?
Leahy: At that press conference today, his Ohio health officials sort of downplayed the air and water consequences of this first derailment and then the control burn on February 6th. One of the things that we did notice, however, is vinyl chloride is a carcinogen.
And I don’t think they really were focused that much on the long-term effects that having these chemicals in the groundwater could possibly have that was an element that they underplayed. I do have an answer to your question from earlier today.
Bannon: Hold it. Just hang on. But hang on. Whoa, slow down, slow down. Until today, because you just had the governor until today, they sent the kids back to school yesterday. Until today, they have they come out and told people they should be drinking bottled water? Yes or no?
Personally, I would stay indoors. He’s the governor of the freaking state. Why are you sending the kids back to school? Did they put out things about drinking bottled water and staying indoors?
Leahy: Yes, they put this out in a low-key sort of way, but I think you’re right. The media pressure…
Bannon: Whoa, hold on, whoa. That was all taken off the cities back to normal. “Back to normal.” They brought people back in. They haven’t told people to continue to shelter in place. That was a new thing today. He says, yeah, I would stay indoors. That’s why the reporter asked the question. Correct?
Leahy: You are correct. I’m just reporting what he said.
Bannon: No, here’s my point. They come up today and you said long-term. The head guy right there said you should be drinking bottled water and particularly if you’re pregnant, maybe even shouldn’t be around. I don’t get why they are doing this.
Look, it’s good that they’re doing today, but why has it been this huge kind of gap in any kind of information or any kind of telling people what’s going on? Why did it take today to have this press conference from the last time he helicoptered in and had a press conference the last time?
Leahy: I think it was the media pressure, in part the media pressure that you placed on him from WarRoom and some of our reporting at The Ohio Star. But let me get back to the question you asked about. Remember, the incident happened on February 3rd. On February 6th, three days later, there was a control burn. You wanted to know who made that decision. You asked me several times this morning.
I have the answer to that question. It’s our lead story at The Ohio Star right now. He admitted in his press conference that ‘we made the decision.’ The collective “we” he talked to was Governor DeWine part of that we. He consulted with the Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania because they’re 50 miles away and they are right on the border with Pennsylvania, 50 miles away from Pittsburgh.
And also with ‘unnamed federal agencies and unnamed state agencies.’ So the we, it looks like to me the we is Governor DeWine because none of the others really had any authority. He did not, however, cite in his press conference what legal authority gave him the right to make that.
Bannon: What authority does he have because the water goes all the way into the Ohio River Valley and the air goes right through Pennsylvania? But hang on for one second. Did he talk about any analysis? Because remember, there are two things going on here. There’s a controlled release, right?
There’s a controlled release of the chemicals into the ditch, and then there’s a controlled burn of the chemicals. They did a release. We have to know. It feels like Norfolk Southern had the quickest way they could do this which was to get the stuff out of the tanks, burn it, move the tanks, clear it, and get the trains running again. That’s what happened here. Where’s the analysis? What are the alternatives? How do you burn this stuff in the atmosphere? You know why they did it? Because it was the quick way to move it. You ask this guy five questions and it’s a complete meltdown.
Leahy: Now, here’s what he said. He said that they did modeling of where the air would move in the plume when they did the controlled burn. And he said that they developed that with the Ohio National Guard in conjunction with the Department of Defense. He said they had analysis before he issued that decision. The collective we. But it was basically DeWine that made that decision to do the control burning.
Bannon: But hang on. The controlled release gets the stuff out. You scoop it back up, put in something else and truck it out of there, and take it back out. You don’t have to burn it into…
Leahy: I’ve got to make this point so that we can be fair to DeWine.
Bannon: Go ahead. I want to be fair.
Leahy:Â On that morning of February 6th, what he said that the decision that he faced was either those five carriages with the vinyl chloride could possibly explode, sending metal shards up around into the air and down for about a mile or to release it in a controlled burn. That’s how they framed the decision. I don’t know if that’s true.
Bannon: Let me be blunt. That’s the wrong framing. You do a controlled release, so you take away the possibility of having the explosion. Got that. We don’t want shards of metal going everywhere. You do a controlled release into the ditch, and then you pull it back into something. You don’t have to burn it.
That’s a separate decision. You can put it back. Show me the alternative of putting it back into something else and trucking it out there. Putting in another rail cart and getting it the hell out of there and not burning it into the atmosphere.
Leahy: That was an option that a former naval officer might come up with, right? Who actually knows how to get things done. (Bannon laughs) But it was not an option that they considered whatsoever, Steve.
Watch the interview:
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