In this episode, we take a trip to a small town in Ohio where a train derailed and released toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. We meet the people closest to the blast site and give them some money to help clean it up.
00:11:32.720It's Wednesday, 22 February in the year of our Lord, 2023.
00:11:38.720It's Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and there's not a better way to start this Lent season off, the 40 days of Lent, than the tale of two cities.
00:11:46.720The Ukraine in Kiev, Warsaw, Poland, all of it, versus East Palestine, Ohio.
00:12:06.720I fundamentally believe that this country is facing a battle of darkness and light, good and evil.
00:12:12.720I also know that Christians are more powerful than we could possibly know.
00:12:17.720We have the creator of the universe on our side, and he asks us to be a light in dark places.
00:12:22.720And there's few places darker right now than East Palestine, Ohio.
00:12:26.720You know, those people were already hanging on by a thread, and then the government came in and nuked their town with chemicals, and so they needed help.
00:12:32.720And so we just followed the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:12:37.720We are simple Christians, and we just went and gave what we could.
00:13:39.720If there was a tragedy in Tampa, Florida, these people in East Palestine would be the first ones to be delivering what they could.
00:13:47.720They would give us the shirt off their back if they could.
00:13:50.720They are the salt and the earth of this country, and that earth has now been poisoned by an evil corporation and the government that has been bought off by that corporation.
00:13:59.720And so it is truly up to us, the American people, to fix that for them.
00:14:03.720And that's what drove us to go there, and that's what drove us to go and do good because they would do good for us.
00:14:09.720And that's actually how you build a country.
00:14:11.720That's how you keep a country is you have Americans helping other Americans.
00:14:16.720And again, we don't need the government's permission to do that.
00:15:17.720To dig our country out of this mountain of debt, every single taxpayer in America would have to write a check for $247,000, and it's only going to get worse.
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00:19:25.720He forced Shapiro, DeWine, EPA director, to stop the trip to Africa to do the boondoggle on climate change
00:19:32.720and come back yesterday to try to get ahead of him.
00:19:34.720But what would Benny Johnson, what would be your recommendation for President Trump, the best use of his time today in East Palestine, Ohio?
00:19:41.720Of course, Steve, you know Trump far better than me or almost anyone on the planet.
00:19:45.720However, in the small hours that I've gotten to spend with Donald Trump privately,
00:19:50.720I watched him behind the scenes in a kitchen environment at one of his hotels before a speech.
00:19:56.720And that man went to the person for the service staff in the kitchen and asked them their stories, spoke with them.
00:20:05.720Half these people were from Guatemala.
00:20:07.720And so they spoke very broken English, but Trump connected with them, hugged some of them, spoke with them about their children.
00:20:13.720That is a superpower for our president.
00:20:16.720And so Donald Trump should use that superpower today to connect with the people of East Palestine.
00:20:21.720What they need is a hug, most importantly, from someone powerful.
00:20:25.720What they need is somebody to know that they're not lost in the darkness, that there is a light out there,
00:20:30.720because it is a very, very dark place right now, East Palestine.
00:20:33.720And again, they were hanging on by a thread, thanks to globalism and thanks to the central planners moving out all of the industry from that area of the country.
00:20:42.720That used to be a deeply prosperous area of the country.
00:21:13.720If I may, for just a moment, if you missed the video, the way we were able to give the $20,000 to the people, which was our revenue for January when this crash happened,
00:21:24.720the way we were able to do that is because people watch our show.
00:21:28.720And so you can find us at Benny Johnson at all social media.
00:21:31.720You can download our podcast, The Benny Show.
00:21:34.720And what that does is it, even if you don't have $5 to give to these people of East Palestine, I know your heart breaks for them.
00:21:41.720So by watching our programming and by watching our show, we get monetization from that.
00:22:07.720We're going to play a cold open for Ben and then go directly to Ben Berquam in East Palestine, Ohio.
00:22:12.720An agency has ordered Norfolk Southern to clean up the toxic chemicals spilled when one of the company's trains derailed nearly three weeks ago now along the Ohio, Pennsylvania border.
00:22:22.720The order requires the rail operator to identify and clean any contaminated soil and water, pay all EPA costs and to participate in public meetings at the agency's request.
00:22:33.720If the company fails to do any of these, the EPA says it will take over and charge Norfolk Southern triple the cost.
00:22:41.720In no way, shape or form will Norfolk Southern get off the hook for the mess that they created.
00:22:50.720Folks, I know this order cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with, but it will begin to deliver much needed justice for the pain that Norfolk Southern has caused.
00:23:03.720Action also being taken at the state level.
00:23:06.720Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro says his office now has made a criminal referral to the acting attorney general there.
00:23:12.720Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signaled yesterday his office also is preparing to take legal action.
00:23:18.720The Biden administration has been criticized for what some say has been a slow response to the derailment.
00:23:24.720Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was asked yesterday if he should have spoken out sooner.
00:23:29.720I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set, but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident.
00:23:41.720President Biden also posted a long Twitter thread defending the actions of the White House and criticizing rail companies for, quote, resisting safety regulations.
00:23:50.720The president also blamed the previous administration for, quote, limiting our ability to implement and strengthen rail safety measures.
00:23:57.720Speaking of the previous administration, John, former President Donald Trump says he's going to be there in East Palestine, Ohio today.
00:24:04.720Yeah, we don't know what his agenda will be or when he is supposed to arrive, but he said he'll be there today.
00:24:09.720And we should note that his administration rolled back some of the safety regulations that may have played a role here in this crash.
00:24:15.720Certainly now there is a lot of scrutiny. This is all this is all this is all license.
00:24:20.720This is all lies and spin. And we now know from a White House readout that Biden's been on the phone nonstop.
00:24:25.720They made Michael Regan go yesterday. DeWine finally after the war room hammers him.
00:24:29.720You got DeWine looking at legal action. The legal action ought to be against you, DeWine.
00:24:33.720OK, and you Shapiro and you Mike Regan. OK, and the company, obviously the company, but the company did not have you only set up a unified command yesterday against federal regulations.
00:24:43.720You're three weeks late. Ben Burkwam, you're there on the scene, sir. Put us in the room.
00:24:49.720Well, I got you can see behind me, Steven. It's there's some freezing rain coming down right now.
00:24:56.720But behind me, you've got the construction crews. All of this is the broken down, exploded train.
00:25:02.720Some of the the remnants of what's left. It's an absolute disaster over to my left.
00:25:06.720You've got the the heavy equipment over here picking up train cars, picking up the wheels of the train and loading them into dumpsters.
00:25:15.720But I'm standing in mud and talking to the people on the ground here.
00:25:19.720They feel just like Benny mentioned. They feel like they've been abandoned.
00:25:23.720And they were coming up to us just saying thank you for coming and telling the story.
00:25:27.720You know, we've we've just been waiting here.
00:25:29.720So one of the women women that I talked to said she was told to just stay in her house.
00:25:32.720So the evacuation zone was just a mile wide.
00:25:35.720And then everybody else where the plume of this cloud of toxic gas went above their house was told to just stay in their house.
00:25:41.720She said she's had a sore throat and had headaches ever since.
00:25:44.720And we're hearing that over and over. I actually got I don't know if this is placebo, but we came down here last night.
00:25:49.720And this morning I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose.
00:25:52.720I don't know if it's connected or not, but I got to tell you, the fear on the ground here is palpable.
00:25:57.720The people, they don't trust the federal government and not just here.
00:26:01.720What you see going on right now, you've got the rain coming down here.
00:26:04.720We had this toxic gas that came from here, went northeast across Pennsylvania, up into Canada, across the eastern states.
00:26:13.720And what's happening now is as this rain falls, it all gets washed down into the tributaries and the rivers.
00:26:19.720I was talking to a guy last night named Wes, and he said these rivers flow right into the Ohio River, goes right down through Cincinnati.
00:26:25.720I have family just outside of Cincinnati. I was with them yesterday.
00:26:29.720And they said the grocery stores are running out of fresh water there because the people don't trust the water that's coming down the Ohio River.
00:26:35.720It's just it's an it's a disaster on on an epic proportion.
00:26:39.720And to have Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg blame President Trump.
00:26:44.720It's I mean, it's it's shocking. It's absolutely shocking.
00:26:48.720It's not surprising, sadly, but it's just like being here.
00:26:53.720And the people here, the people of East Palestine deserve better and the American people deserve better.
00:26:58.720By the way, Nick Sorter has just reported, just tweeted out how people are so excited to see President Trump.
00:27:05.720Ben, real quickly, what would be your recommendation to President Trump when he comes, he gets wheels down there and gets to East Palestine sometime this afternoon?
00:27:14.720Use every bit of leverage that he has to help the people here.
00:27:20.720They are desperate. And really, as Benny said, they just want to know that they're heard.
00:27:25.720The people here feel like they've been abandoned.
00:27:27.720Blue collar workers, you know, a lot of steel industry here.
00:27:30.720These are people that that are just hard workers, love their country, love God, love their families.
00:27:35.720And they just want to feel like they're not being abandoned. And as up to this point, they've been abandoned.
00:27:40.720And that's really it. It's just I'll say it.
00:27:42.720Wes said it best. I said, what do you make of and Wes was a guy interviewed last night talking about all of this stuff flowing down into the into the Ohio River.
00:27:50.720I said, what do you make of President Trump coming here before Joe Biden or our Pete Buttigieg or any of them?
00:27:56.720And he said, President Trump's a man of the people. And that's really what it comes down to.
00:28:01.720Ben, just hang on for one second. Our stand is starting to rain there. Just hang on one second.
00:28:05.720We'll take a short break. We're going to go back to East Palestine, Ohio.
00:28:08.720Ben Burke on Real America's Voice, the best lead investigative reporter is there on the scene.
00:28:13.720Cortez is with me. Ben Harnwell's with me. We're going to go.
00:28:17.720We've got Michael Patrick Lea, Jeff Clark, all of it. Wall to wall today.
00:28:20.720The tale of two cities back in a second.
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00:33:56.720And President Trump, in many ways, owes his 2016 triumph to just to the people just like those good citizens of East Palestine, Ohio.
00:34:05.720And, you know, Benny Johnson mentioned, you know, look at the indignities,
00:34:09.720at the suffering that has been inflicted by the ruling class upon these people, even before the tragedy of the train wreck.
00:34:16.720Right. What globalism has done to towns like that in eastern Ohio, in western Pennsylvania.
00:34:22.720Think of the constant interventions and needless wars all over the world.
00:34:26.720The sons and daughters of places like East Palestine are the people who went and bled and died in those needless wars, which were perpetrated by the ruling class.
00:34:34.720By the way, speaking of President Trump, there's a fantastic paper done by a couple of academics who are not Trump people at all.
00:34:40.720One of them is Professor Shen, who is a law professor at University of Minnesota.
00:34:44.720And they give a great statistical analysis attributing the 2016 triumph, which you largely engineered, Steve,
00:34:51.720attributing it to areas of the country like East Ohio that had extremely high war casualty rates.
00:34:58.720Those places flipped from being Democrat Obama voters to Trump voters, largely because of his America first foreign policy promises of realism and restraint,
00:35:08.720promises that he then followed up on as president.
00:35:11.720We see the exact opposite right now as Joe Biden.
00:35:14.720And you're exactly correct to present this stark contrast between the tale of two cities, East Palestine, Ohio versus Kiev.
00:35:21.720Where is the focus? Where is the fixation? I would say not just a focus.
00:35:25.720Where is the fixation of the ruling class of America right now, whether it's giant corporations or the corporate media or Joe Biden himself?
00:35:33.720Their fixation is on Kiev, is on a regional Slavic struggle five thousand miles away from America,
00:35:40.720a battle that has gone on for time immemorial and will probably go on until the end of time.
00:35:46.720That thankfully involves no discernible, definable U.S. national interest.
00:35:50.720And yet that is the fixation of the ruling class instead of places like East Palestine, Ohio, which right now is suffering.
00:35:59.720And by the way, too, let's not let the politicians and the political leaders absolutely deserve all of our derision regarding their their abdication of leadership here.
00:36:09.720But let's not let Norfolk Southern off the hook. And it's CEO Alan Shaw.
00:36:14.720Let's remember that he offered one thousand dollars. Think about how paltry this is.
00:36:19.720He offered one thousand dollars per resident.
00:36:22.720You saw Benny Johnson go and give that much in an envelope in cash.
00:36:25.720OK, just an independent broadcaster offered as much as the CEO of a 50 billion dollar corporation.
00:36:33.720That is the market cap of Norfolk Southern. Alan Shaw made over four million dollars last year.
00:36:38.720He lives in a four million dollar mansion right now.
00:36:42.720And instead of relocating temporarily, he should be on the ground constantly in East Palestine.
00:36:47.720So should Buttigieg. So should EPA Regan.
00:36:50.720So should Governor DeWine. Instead of relocating there, instead of drinking the water,
00:36:54.720if they tell us it's safe and doing so on camera out of the tap.
00:36:58.720Where is he? He's aloof. He's disconnected.
00:37:01.720And again, he is representative of the larger corporate class, the ruling class in this country, whether it's politics or media or big business.
00:37:10.720They don't care about the deplorables in places like East Palestine.
00:37:14.720And this this unfortunate tragedy is revealing that for the country.
00:37:18.720I sent you the readout from the White House that showed that they actually put out that Biden was not.
00:37:25.720I think it's five phone calls from Warsaw, five phone calls about this to EPA, to other people in the administration, to Josh Shapiro.
00:37:33.720They're in panic mode when he's in Warsaw.
00:37:51.720There's something deeply wrong with what's going on that doesn't match the facts on the ground or really the the facts of what the starting days of the Third World War.
00:38:19.720By the way, first, before we get to Biden, just quickly on Buttigieg, we realize here that, you know, this is the travesty of hiring for quotas.
00:38:30.720He was hired for one reason only because he's gay and he's very upfront about it.
00:38:34.720And he and he loves to talk about it constantly because he is an immature, arrogant McKinsey consultant with no significant experience in the transportation sector at all.
00:38:44.720The mayor of a pretty small town with a pretty bad track record as mayor.
00:38:49.720The mayor was brought into the Biden cabinet and is totally unprepared in every way to manage several crises, plural, but including this most recent crisis.
00:39:00.720I think Biden, you know, he put out a tweet and you're exactly right.
00:39:03.720There's something almost eerie about it.
00:39:05.720And you're right, too, that it's messianic in a sense.
00:39:18.720OK, is he talking about the people of Ukraine?
00:39:20.720Because, by the way, if he is, Zelensky is hardly a harbinger of liberty.
00:39:26.720OK, Zelensky is a man who has literally outlawed a Christian church in his country, a man who has nationalized the media, who has outlawed opposition parties in Ukraine.
00:39:38.720He is an incredibly corrupt man who is supported by oligarchs.
00:39:41.720Putin is every bit as corrupt, if not more so.
00:39:44.720My point is there's no good guy in this fight.
00:39:47.720And thankfully, there's no American interest in this fight.
00:39:50.720And yet we get these ridiculous platitudes, the people's love for liberty.
00:39:55.720Look, Joe Biden is reckless and he is absolutely playing with fire right now.
00:40:01.720And he is risking sending the United States into World War Three over a regional struggle in the Baltic that has nothing to do with the United States.
00:40:12.720So realize what is happening right now.
00:40:14.720Realize the gravity of this situation, what the Davos set wants, what the Washington war machine wants, what the defense contractors want right now.
00:40:23.720And I think also realize we are at the most dangerous moment right now.
00:40:27.720We are at a national security precipice that is as dangerous as any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:40:33.720That is my my my dispassionate analysis of the current situation.
00:40:38.720Now, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had nuclear missiles 90 miles away from the United States.
00:40:43.720OK, that was a crisis that we could not avoid and that we had to confront.
00:40:48.720This is a crisis that we are creating, fomenting, financing with money that we don't have, with money that we're borrowing and escalating.
00:40:56.720This is a totally avoidable crisis for the United States.
00:41:01.720And yet, Joe Biden, you're exactly correct.
00:41:04.720And perhaps it's a massive diversion because he realizes what is going on at home, particularly economically, as the situation deteriorates rapidly here on the economy for Americans.
00:41:14.720He's trying to create a massive wag the dog moment.
00:41:17.720But Steve, he is absolutely playing with fire and the American people could pay dire consequences for it.
00:41:31.720What is he trying to divert attention away from the reality of life in the in the country and particularly for folks, the types of people from East Palestine, Ohio?
00:41:41.720And by the way, yeah, let's let's talk about that, because yesterday on the show we talked about credit card debt, which has reached one trillion dollars, almost nine hundred eighty six billion dollars, one trillion dollars in credit card debt right now in the United States.
00:41:54.720That is by far the highest of all time and not just the highest in dollar terms, but also the biggest year over year leap of all times.
00:42:02.720That one trillion dollars of credit card debt is at an interest rate now on average of over 20 percent because of Biden's inflation, the highest interest rate of all time.
00:42:11.720So Americans are struggling and are unfortunately reaching for risky credit card debt just to pay for the for the staples of life, not for luxuries.
00:42:21.720Just yesterday, by the way, speaking of retailers of consumer facing companies, just yesterday, Home Depot stock fell seven percent at the higher end of the scale.
00:42:33.720So on a day when Home Depot falls seven percent and Nordstrom falls eight percent, instead of worrying about the U.S. economy, Biden is in Europe trying to stoke an escalation and a global war, a global conflagration.
00:42:46.720You know, think of that contrast. And by the way, this credit card problem is not just a problem for individuals.
00:42:52.720It's also a problem for the federal government.
00:42:55.720You know, if it's possible, if we can pull up chart number one, I'd like to show what is going on.
00:42:59.720I tell you, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, hang on one second.
00:43:02.720We're going to get to the government's credit card in a second.
00:43:06.720Steve Cortez is going to walk us through from the details of the consumer to now the federal government and how that's all going to roll back downhill in a moment in the world.
00:43:21.720In Joe Biden's America, criminals are exalted and the police are condemned.
00:43:27.720Sad to say, but you need to be prepared and properly trained to defend yourself and to defend your family.
00:47:21.720So we've been talking about the unfortunate explosion in credit card debt for regular Americans.
00:47:26.720Well, the Fed effectively has viewed its balance sheet as an almost limitless credit card.
00:47:32.720So that is the Fed balance sheet going back five years.
00:47:36.720As you can see before the lockdowns, relatively tame.
00:47:40.720And thanks to the policies, the growth, pro-growth policies of Donald Trump, the Fed balance sheet was thankfully starting to slowly go lower.
00:47:47.720If you look on the left-hand side of that chart, it then absolutely exploded higher with the lockdowns and with the unfortunate election of Joe Biden.
00:47:58.720Now, in recent months, the Fed has promised, because it finally found religion and promised to fight inflation, in recent months, the balance sheet has been getting reduced.
00:48:07.720It went from almost $9 trillion to $8.38 trillion, a reduction of almost $600 billion.
00:48:13.720Now, that sounds like a ton of money, and it is in reality.
00:48:16.720But the reason I want to show that chart is it is immaterial.
00:48:19.720It's nothing in the context of the rise.
00:48:23.720In other words, this recent very slight reduction matters very little compared to the ascent of previous years.
00:48:30.720And yet, Steve, I think this is critically important.
00:48:32.720And yet, even this very slight reduction in the Fed balance sheet has brought tumult to global financial markets.
00:48:39.720You know, I talked yesterday about the intense pain for retailers, particularly Home Depot and Walmart.
00:48:45.720That kind of pain and that kind of market volatility has resulted from just a very slight decline in the Fed's balance sheet and what is effectively the credit card of the Federal Reserve for America.
00:48:58.720Now, it's reducing its balance sheet, by the way, though, in a time.
00:49:01.720It should be doing this in a time of growth.
00:49:48.720One of the reasons about what they have to do now, Steve Cortez, correct me if I'm wrong, and Mercatus did the analysis.
00:49:55.720There's they've been they've been playing this game because the interest rate arbitrage of kicking 50 billion or 100 billion dollars in to take care of the deficit.
00:50:03.720They're sitting on still, I think, a trillion dollar loss over there on the Federal Reserve.
00:50:14.720So the Fed was able to transfer to the Treasury every year significant profits and, you know, the really profits in quotes because the Fed was effectively eating its own tail.
00:50:22.720In other words, it was buying bonds as it was buying bonds.
00:50:24.720They were naturally going up in price because it has such massive buying power and they were capturing profits on the way up.
00:50:31.720Well, now, as it unwinds the balance sheet on the way down, there's enormous losses.
00:50:36.720And you're exactly correct that the federal deficit situation, which is already terrible, it's going to get even worse without that injection, that basically fake transfer from the Fed over to the Treasury.
00:50:48.720You know, and all of this, by the way, against the backdrop of an economy, which unfortunately is falling apart.
00:51:09.720The economy was recovering with gusto.
00:51:11.720That's the first arrow pointing upward ever since Biden's policies took effect.
00:51:16.720Look at the arrow downward and the demonstrable trend, unfortunately, into deeply negative territory for Philadelphia Fed.
00:51:24.720Manufacturing came in shockingly low in recent days, minus 24.3.
00:51:30.720Other than the lockdowns, that is the lowest number we have seen since the 08-09 great financial crisis, the great recession.
00:51:38.720That is the reality of where we are right now, not according to Steve Cortez or Steve Bannon, according to the numbers, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
00:51:46.720And it's on the ground assessment of what is happening in manufacturing in this country.
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