EAST PALETINE, Ohio – On February 22, 2023, the day former President Donald Trump arrived in this miniature Columbiana County village, unforgiving sleet and rain fell. Despite the weather and concerns about what was in the air or what kind of chemical was lurking in the mud puddles they were walking through, hundreds of people lined Main Street as Trump’s motorcade, packed with state and local law enforcement, blared its sirens on its way to the city.
Men and women, youthful and elderly, children, teenagers and several dozen Amish families waited in the icy rain along a designated route, awaiting Trump’s arrival in their city, less than a month after a 38-car train from Norfolk Southern spewed poisonous residue into the air. First there was a fiery derailment with immediate effects lasting two days, followed by a controlled burn that released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air and water.
If you lived within a mile of here, you were evacuated two days after the derailment, when a change in temperature in one of the derailed cars caused officials to fear a violent explosion riddled with shrapnel that could have caused a mass disaster. They were also deeply concerned about the failure of one of the valves in a tanker carrying vinyl chloride, a carcinogen.
If you had been visiting this place for weeks – as I had, writing about the disaster – you understood more than anything else that the people here wanted to know that those in power would facilitate them. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, just weeks after taking the oath of office, has been here many times. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio also attended. But the person with the most power, President Joe Biden, has not arrived and never will.
Vance told me that Trump did a great favor to the people of East Palestine by forcing the political class to care about them.
“His visit filled the leadership vacuum left by Joe Biden’s indifference to this disaster,” he said. “It sent a clear message to the rest of the country that these people are our countrymen and we cannot abandon them.”
Dressed in a white shirt and pants and wearing a black coat, the former president did what many other residents of the area did on that dreary day: he rolled up his pants, slipped his pants into what looked like brown waterproof Carhartt steel-toed boots, and headed through the village.
Trump’s arrival came at a tough political moment. Some of his true supporters still felt the sting of midterm defeats, especially in the Senate to candidates he supported in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, and many blamed him for electing flawed people who were unable to win over other major candidates who they believed to the polls, would be stronger.
Polls at the time showed he would be in a very close race against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who had not yet announced his run. Prior to Trump’s arrival, the village even had flags in support of both Trump and DeSantis in several different yards.
Although a turn in the polls in Trump’s favor wouldn’t occur for at least a month after his visit here – he started gaining ground in March, as news of the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment broke – I wrote in my rain-stained journal that day that if he can resurrect the magic of 2016, the understanding of the forgotten man and woman and the dignity of work, it started here, the day he showed up when Biden refused.
East Palestinian resident Tammy Tsai stood along Main Street and watched Trump ride in despite the rain with her husband, Rick Tsai, who arrived before her. Even before February 3, the actress and her husband talked about early retirement in their family home and enjoying life a little slower.
A year later, their peaceful life changed. From a fisherman, he became a man with a mission to document what happened here and facilitate neighbors and friends who were long forgotten after the film crew left. He and Tammy delivered water to their community and raised tens of thousands of dollars for employees when the local Family Dollar store suddenly closed. And the once apolitical chiropractor is now running for the seat vacated by Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, to become president of Youngstown State University.
Tammy Tsai said she walked when Trump visited the facility that day. “He was first at Roadhouse, then he went to Brittain Motors. I never once got close enough to shake his hand, but I could really watch people’s reactions both times and then outside McDonald’s.”
“You will not be forgotten,” Trump said at a news conference, where he stood with cases of “Trump” bottled water that he brought for residents of this quaint village of 5,000. residents along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
Flanked by Vance, Mayor Trent Conaway and other local officials, Trump added: “In too many cases, your kindness and perseverance have been met with indifference and betrayal.”
Tammy Tsai said Trump had the right instincts to show up here.
“In many ways, we are a symbol or a poster child for a place that Washington forgets. “President Biden emphasized this by not coming then, now or ever,” she said.
She emphasized that Trump’s presence was extremely critical. “If you haven’t experienced what we have and understood what it’s like to be dismissed as not important enough, Trump’s presence showed that he cared,” she said. “There will always be people who say it was a stunt. Well, he didn’t have to do it, but he did. That’s more than I can say about President Biden.”
Newsweek searched 380 White House press releases from the date of the disaster, Feb. 3, 2023, to the day Trump arrived, revealing no direct statements by Biden on East Palestine. However, Biden finally tweeted about it the day before Trump arrived.
On February 27, when pressed, Biden said he had no plans to appear.
“Showing up matters,” Marcy Ford explained from her home in nearby Darlington, Pennsylvania, where runoff from the derailment and subsequent controlled burn sent chemicals into streams toward her hometown.
Ford, who owns a farm in East Palestine, became very close to Trump that day and said she wanted to make sure he chronicled it because of what it meant to her.
“Before him, I was a Democrat,” she said. “I changed the party because of the way he addressed the corporations directly. I have voted for him twice since then.”
Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University, explained that Trump’s rehabilitation among Republicans is multi-faceted. “This is clearly influenced by the belief that he is treated unfairly by the justice system and that he is a target, that there is a mobilization effect, but that is not the whole story,” he said.
Sracic said Trump’s instinct to show up here last year was reminiscent of classic Trump in 2016, when he was at his best.
“This is now the heart of Trump country, the border dividing Ohio and Pennsylvania that stretches from Ashtabula and Erie all the way to Youngstown, Wheeling and neighboring counties in western Pennsylvania,” Sracic said. “And to remind people that he was physically there for them when they were hurt and upset, he often likes to say, ‘Listen, I’m there. I am ready to fight for you». and in this case, provide and be there.”
“It was an important moment in his rehabilitation,” Sracic added during the autopsy, which showed what mistakes the candidates had made. “We often forget to talk about what Trump did right, and this was one of those key moments that people missed.”
While the national press has focused all year on what Trump says about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and his legal proceedings, it has missed moments in its reporting when Trump has also been selectively engaged with places and issues that voters care about.
Ultimately, his legal problems may be of great importance – preliminary polls leading into the Iowa caucuses showed whether Trump had been convicted, and a third of voters said he would be unfit to serve – but the error in the reporting of this race is a sin omissions. We cannot continue to make the mistake of ignoring things he does that do not apply to him but concern voters.
