“While some of the wounded” from the Amtrak train derailment Tuesday “are still being treated and other passengers are still unaccounted for, there has been a predictable but no less despicable rush to turn this tragedy into a political talking point,” charged a visibly-heated Megyn Kelly on Fox Wednesday night.
“It barely took 12 hours for some political leaders to start finding blame,” said Kelly. “‘Not enough Amtrak funding,’ they suggested; ‘not enough money for infrastructure.’ They blamed the stingy Republicans and stalled spending bills.”
Kelly continued: “In the hours since we’ve discovered a few things that the investigators like to call facts. The speed limit in the area of the crash was 50 miles an hour. The train was going twice that. An engineer slammed on the brakes but when the train went off the rails it was still cranking along at 102 miles an hour!”
“Speed certainly looks like the demon,” said Fox News correspondent Trace Gallagher. “The train was relatively new but that stretch of track is the most heavily used in the country.”
Kelly played a clip of White House press secretary Josh Earnest, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y, blaming the Amtrak crash on lack of funding for infrastructure.
She sighed loudly, then said incredulously: “Really?”
“I have very low expectations for Washington and the way people talk here,” said Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor. “It is hot garbage quite often. … I expect very little of these people, but let me tell you something, this is an astonishment even for me.” He said he could “not believe” the tragedy was being used in a budget fight “even before the dead are recovered.”
“‘Last night we failed them, we failed them on the infrastructure,'” Kelly intoned. “Who failed them? The engineer was going twice the speed limit. Right now the mayor of Philadelphia is looking at him. Why aren’t we talking about him? How exactly did the infrastructure fail?”
Kelly then brought on guest Robert Zimmerman, New York Democratic National Committee member. “How is this an infrastructure problem?” she asked.
Zimmerman began to argue that a critical control was delayed due to lack of funding, before Kelly cut him off.
“Why don’t they stop and say we need personal responsibility, and right now our main investigation is focused on the engineer. Let’s let that play out before we start demanding more money!”
“The vast, vast majority of [train trips] in this country arrive safely.” shouted Kelly. “This isn’t an infrastructure problem.”
“Megyn, we have an infrastructure crisis in our country,” said Zimmerman, citing a “D+” rating by American Society of Engineers.
“That’s a separate argument they’re having about transportation funding – you don’t exploit a tragedy like this that may have nothing to do with infrastructure,” Kelly charged.
Zimmerman countered that the reason the issue was in the news at all was because Republicans in Congress met to cut funding “and that’s why Democrats responded.”
Kelly angrily responded that nothing that happened Tuesday necessarily has “anything to do with the cause of this crash, and to suggest that it does is exploitative. Amtrak has gotten $1.5 billion funding from the Feds every year! …This is Rahm Emanuel ‘Never let a crisis go to waste.'”
