Most voters grade President Joe Biden and his administration poorly in their response to the multi-train car derailment over three weeks ago in East Palestine, Ohio, that has threatened the health of residents and raised the specter of a two-state environmental catastrophe.
In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shared with Secrets, 62% said the Biden administration has done a fair to poor job reacting to the crisis. Just 10% graded it “excellent.”
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Biden has spent hours trying to convince the nation that he, the transportation secretary, and the Environmental Protection Agency administrator were working on the problem within hours of the nighttime spill and subsequent fires.
But the polling shows that most voters aren’t buying it.
For the country, the problem is a hot one. Rasmussen said that 82% are following the fallout of the chemical spill closely, an indication of how much the crisis could nick Biden and his team’s bumbling on it.
And many don’t believe the pronouncements of safety from government officials.
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Asked, for example, how safe people would feel drinking the local water in town, just 23% said they would feel safe, and 71% said they wouldn’t feel safe to drink it.
Biden was elected as a politician with strong ties to rail towns, having returned home to Wilmington, Delaware, on Amtrak when he was a senator. He also has a reputation for sympathizing with blue-collar America. But recent polls suggest that he is losing those ties as the nation sees him refusing to visit the Ohio town.
