Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 14, 2023


Ep 754 ｜ 'UFOs' & Ohio Disaster： What’s REALLY Happening ｜ Guest： James Jay Carafano


Episode Stats

Length

51 minutes

Words per Minute

174.85701

Word Count

8,937

Sentence Count

534

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

18


Summary

While there are flying objects in America s airspace, are they aliens coming to rule over us? Are they something else? Should we care? And, what is happening in East Palestine, Ohio? We are going to break down everything that is happening with these two mysterious stories.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 While there are flying objects in America's airspace, are they aliens coming to rule over
00:00:07.880 us? Are they something else? Should we care? Why isn't the media really talking about what's going
00:00:15.180 on? Why isn't the government being more transparent? And then Ohio, what is happening
00:00:21.840 there with the large explosion that is affecting not just the human population in East Palestine,
00:00:27.660 Ohio, but also the animal population? We are going to break down everything that is happening with
00:00:34.580 these two mysterious stories. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:40.800 Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use promo code Allie at checkout. This is GoodRanchers.com. Promo code Allie.
00:00:45.680 All right. So we obviously have a lot to talk about today. First, we're going to talk about
00:00:58.920 these Chinese spy balloons, UFOs, what is happening in our skies, and then we'll get to all of the
00:01:05.400 Ohio stuff. I mean, it's all really kind of connected in one way or another. I don't mean
00:01:09.680 that in a conspiratorial way. I just mean that, I mean, all of this kind of has to do with each
00:01:15.860 other and the leadership that we have selected to watch out for the well-being of the American
00:01:21.520 people. So first, we're going to talk to Jim Carrafano. He is the director of the Douglas
00:01:25.560 and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He is an adjunct
00:01:30.980 professor at the Institute of World Politics. He is an expert in all of this stuff, and he is going
00:01:35.700 to break down exactly what is happening with these unidentified flying objects. He actually
00:01:41.740 says that they are identified. We know exactly what they are. We know exactly why they are flying
00:01:47.140 and what exactly that they're doing. He dispels what he thinks are a lot of myths and a lot of
00:01:52.200 different theories that people are putting out there about what these balloons are, and he says that
00:01:56.880 they absolutely matter. And in case you didn't know, I mean, there's a Chinese spy balloon that got
00:02:03.180 shot down a couple of weeks ago. It was floating around. It got shot down outside of Myrtle Beach
00:02:07.420 on top of the ocean. But now there have been other objects that Canada has shot down and that America
00:02:14.400 has shot down, and people are like, what the heck is going on? And so our next guest is going to tell
00:02:19.560 us what the heck is going on, and then we'll get into the catastrophe that's happening in Ohio. So
00:02:23.860 without further ado, here is Heritage Foundation's Jim Carrafano.
00:02:27.560 Jen, thanks so much for joining us. All right. I'm just going to let you go. Please explain to us
00:02:36.060 what is flying in our airspace? What is Canada taking down? What are we taking down? What in
00:02:42.520 the world are we supposed to think about all of this? Yeah. Can I start by explaining why it's not
00:02:47.800 aliens? Just kind of get that off the table here. Sure. Look, if you're geeky like I am,
00:02:56.060 you actually read science books. There's actually a lot of science on this. And the physical reality
00:03:01.780 of it, well, first of all, they call it science fiction for a reason, because it's fiction.
00:03:05.880 If you actually look at what you need to do intergalactic space travel, the level of energy
00:03:10.660 and technology you need is so advanced that even if an alien race came to the here, we probably
00:03:18.520 wouldn't recognize it because the level of is such so beyond where we are. They might not even
00:03:24.720 recognize us as sentient beings. So the notion that they're going to fly a balloon here, I mean,
00:03:30.560 this is like something out of the 1950s. So these are balloons?
00:03:33.060 Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, they are. So and the fact that the US government official said,
00:03:40.500 well, we're not ruling anything out just goes to show how ridiculous their whole information
00:03:45.000 thing has been here is like, why cannot they just be straight with the American people? Yeah,
00:03:49.460 you can tell them it's not an alien race. I mean, you can say that. I mean, that's just nonsense.
00:03:53.960 And the reality is, is they know exactly what this is. And the reason for that is because we know
00:03:59.700 exactly what this is. And we know this not because we have access to classified information. I mean,
00:04:04.500 I was in the military for 25 years. I read all the Tom Clancy novels. But the reality is,
00:04:09.500 is if you just look at the publicly available information, it is pretty clear what's going on
00:04:14.180 here. And I'm happy to explain why. So it starts with another news story, which we really haven't
00:04:20.040 been paying attention to, which was the US government recently announced actually something we all
00:04:25.780 already already knew by looking at a lot of open source intelligence, that China has been rapidly
00:04:31.720 building out its nuclear forces, and that they now have more ICBM, International Continental Ballistic
00:04:39.920 Missile Launchers than we do. So an ICBM is a missile that essentially can travel the length of the earth.
00:04:47.820 So you can fire anywhere in the world, and a missile can get here in 30 minutes. And they're so big and
00:04:52.600 powerful that they can carry a heavy payload. That's the thing on the top of the missile.
00:04:56.920 And to take a nuclear weapon, you need a long range, reliable delivery vehicle that can lift that.
00:05:03.840 That missile force is absolutely useless, because these are largely designed to deterrent. They
00:05:09.540 probably stole somebody's password in there. Saw Netflix, The Last of Us. So they don't want to go
00:05:16.000 there. They don't want to end the world in a nuclear holocaust. But they want to be able to hold us at risk,
00:05:21.800 to blackmail us, and threaten us with nuclear confrontation, essentially the way the United
00:05:27.040 States and the Russia did, the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. And to do with that, you not
00:05:32.340 only have to have nuclear weapons, you have to demonstrate that you can put at risk the things
00:05:37.740 the other person values. And those are two things. Part of it is called countervalue targets. That's
00:05:43.740 basically our cities. Now, obviously, those aren't very difficult to target, because you get around
00:05:48.860 McNally Atlas, or Google Earth, and you can do that. The other thing is called counterforce,
00:05:54.360 which is the enemy's ability to strike you with nuclear weapons. And for us, the biggest portion
00:06:01.580 that are land-based bombers, which are basically in holes, sitting in big square states in the West,
00:06:06.920 and the bombers, which fly from big airstrips in the West. Now, you wouldn't think this,
00:06:15.540 but to actually target these with nuclear weapons is hard, because as big and powerful as a nuclear
00:06:20.340 weapon is, you remember, all these things were built during the Cold War to withstand an attack
00:06:26.040 from Russian nuclear weapons. So to actually take out a missile silo, you have to hit the actual
00:06:34.240 missile silo. And so you need very, very precise targeting, not the kind of stuff that you can get
00:06:40.280 off commercial Google Earth or something like that. So they have satellites, just like we have
00:06:47.640 satellites. But the satellites have two limitations. One is, well, the Earth rotates. And so the satellites
00:06:55.460 aren't overhead very long. And so they can only collect for a limited time. And we know when
00:07:04.640 they're overhead, because we know how the Earth moves, and we know where the satellite is. So you
00:07:08.040 can actually cover up things on the ground you don't want the satellite to see. And they're great for
00:07:17.000 imagery intelligence, like pictures, but they can't really necessarily gather other kinds of
00:07:24.240 intelligence. So what is the perfect vehicle for gathering intelligence of US military nuclear
00:07:33.820 assets, airfields, command and control facilities on the ground, that would help you map out where
00:07:41.120 things are and how to target them. And that's a combination of two things. It's called signals
00:07:45.240 intelligence, basically listening to things. So for example, anybody that watches 2480 news shows,
00:07:52.540 we see this all the time, right? The guy murders his girlfriend, takes her out and dumps her in the
00:07:57.460 park. And then the next day he's arrested because the police looked at his cell phone coverage and
00:08:02.740 they saw exactly where he went, right? Okay, that's either SIGINT, which is listening to people's
00:08:09.260 intelligence communications, or MASSINT, which is the signals that they send out, like a radar signal
00:08:15.500 or something else. What's the best way to collect that? Well, it's not from a satellite in space.
00:08:21.180 It's not from ground, because in ground, you have what's called line of sight. If you can't see
00:08:24.860 something, then those transmissions between you are masked by the physical feature in front of you,
00:08:30.540 like a mountain or something. So the Chinese can buy land by the farm next to the missile field,
00:08:36.560 doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to collect very effectively. It's from a balloon
00:08:43.620 at flying at altitude. And the reason for that is very simple. The balloon's there a long time,
00:08:49.260 it moves very slow, it can collect a long time, and it doesn't have a light of sight problem.
00:08:54.140 So these balloons are the perfect vehicle for the Chinese to try to collect the targeting data
00:09:00.520 to make all their nuclear weapons useful. And everything we have seen so far
00:09:05.620 is consistent with that. Let me explain. So the first one, we know it's a Chinese balloon,
00:09:10.180 because the Chinese said it was their balloon. And they said it was a weather balloon,
00:09:14.440 a civilian weather balloon that had wandered off course. We're not buying that, right?
00:09:19.700 Well, so two things. One is, if it had just wandered off course, the first thing they would
00:09:25.580 have done was called the United States and told us. But they didn't do that. So obviously,
00:09:29.820 they're lying. The second is, is the balloons are maneuverable. Third, they just happened to traverse
00:09:35.880 all our military targets from the early warning system in Alaska and Canada, to our missile fields,
00:09:42.140 to all our military facilities throughout the United States. So that's a lie. And the third is,
00:09:46.440 we actually recovered parts of it that show that they had intelligence collection capability on that.
00:09:52.140 And the other thing is, I'm sure the government was monitoring the transmissions. I'm sure those
00:09:55.660 transmissions were encoded. That means they were encrypted, which you don't do for a weather
00:10:00.980 balloon. So we know that's a lie. Now, all these other things, and we'll see what happens
00:10:05.780 when they get wreckage and look at them. But they are consistent with a targeting campaign on the
00:10:12.240 part of the Chinese. Because if they were going to do this, you know, they're only going to likely
00:10:16.500 get one shot at this. I mean, I know they said, well, there were balloons before under Trump,
00:10:19.920 and they've been other places. But we have no physical evidence that they've ever tried to
00:10:24.580 traverse the entire American target array with a balloon collection thing. So if they were going to do
00:10:29.760 that, they know they probably only have one shot at that, and they probably want to get it right.
00:10:34.020 So the answer is, is they're probably going to send multiple vehicles in different configurations
00:10:39.840 at multiple attitudes over the space of a couple of days to try to look for gaps and spaces in the US
00:10:47.240 air defenses and radar to try to sneak through and get as much data as they could.
00:10:52.660 So what we've seen in the last couple of days is completely consistent with that. So here's my
00:10:58.240 problem. What I just told you, that is not a secret. Anybody can figure that out with half a
00:11:04.640 brain. Why wouldn't a US government official stand up in front of the American people and say what I
00:11:12.640 just said? And the answer is, that's, that's the real problem here is, why can't they just be that
00:11:21.200 straight up with us? Right? Well, that's I want to know. Well, I mean, what are your theories? Why
00:11:27.840 wouldn't they be a little bit more transparent? As you said, there was a general who said it was
00:11:33.300 General Van Herc, who said that they have not ruled anything out at this point when a journalist
00:11:38.080 asked him, hey, are we talking about some extraterrestrial thing, which you've already
00:11:42.200 debunked? And so of course, all that's all that's going to do is to create a lot of not just
00:11:47.300 curiosity, but a lot of anxiety and also facilitate a lot of conspiracy theories that I
00:11:51.920 can't imagine are very helpful to all of this. So why wouldn't this administration, I know that you
00:11:57.260 can't read their minds, but why wouldn't they just be a little bit more forthright with what is
00:12:03.240 actually going on? But actually, I can read their minds, not because I can read minds, but for the
00:12:08.640 same reason that mind readers on AGT can read minds, because people are very predictable in what
00:12:13.800 they're doing, right? So look, this story actually gets to the real issue, which is the real problem
00:12:22.620 with this administration's foreign policy on China, which is the greatest strategic threat that the
00:12:29.420 United States faces in the world today. And it's this way is the administration wants it both ways.
00:12:36.380 They want to appear to be tough on China. And the reason for that is simple, because the American
00:12:41.600 people want our government to be tough on China, but they don't really want to be tough on China.
00:12:48.720 They want John Kerry to fly over there in his private jet and eat chop suey with Chairman Xi and
00:12:56.420 cut ribbons at coal-fired plants and stuff. They want Blinken to go over and have meaningless
00:13:02.260 negotiations. They want to pretend that they are oh so smart and they can figure out how to just get
00:13:07.200 along with the Chinese and import Chinese solar panels manufactured with slave labor. They want
00:13:15.160 to do that. So they want to be tough and not tough at the same time. And so they don't really want to
00:13:21.240 talk about this threat in a serious way, because they don't want to be tough on China, but they want
00:13:27.240 to seem like they're being tough on China. So it's they have a policy that simply won't work and they
00:13:35.180 can't let go of it. And that's that's why they just can't be straight with us.
00:13:39.460 So what are your thoughts on how they have not just represented this, but their actions behind
00:13:56.760 it? You know, a lot of people criticize them for not shooting down what we thought was the original
00:14:01.920 Chinese spy balloon until it was, you know, outside Myrtle Beach in the ocean. Is that what
00:14:06.900 they should have done? I mean, obviously, it would have already collected the data by then.
00:14:10.320 But now we see them shooting down these balloons in different places, Canada doing the same thing.
00:14:15.400 Are they going about this action wise the right way?
00:14:20.060 Well, yeah, I if you look at the timeline, it's very clear
00:14:23.800 that they knew this balloon was coming, the big balloon, because and that's not a surprise. It's a big
00:14:29.620 giant blip in the sky. You can't miss it. It's emitting, sending out traffic. You can read that.
00:14:35.620 It's it's consciously being guided on a flight path. You can see that. So there's no shock that
00:14:41.120 the administration saw this thing coming like nobody's business. They didn't say anything about
00:14:47.620 this until the news broke. And then they didn't actually pull Blinken's trip until not just that
00:14:54.140 the news broke, but that they realized how really angry people were at this. So I think the plan
00:14:59.400 was was to let this balloon go over the country and send Blinken to China and pretend like it never
00:15:05.740 happened publicly. That was the plan. Now, what did they do when they actually saw everybody was
00:15:13.060 upset and they said, OK, we're going to respond to this. And they kind of played Keystone Cops for
00:15:17.060 a while. They actually shot it down. But what did they say to mitigate the whole thing? They said,
00:15:20.840 oh, well, don't worry, because we were jamming it the whole time. It didn't collect any data.
00:15:24.060 Yeah. Well, let me tell you what's bad about that, which is if you are jamming an enemy,
00:15:32.060 the one thing you want to do is tell not tell them that you're jamming. You don't want them to know
00:15:37.580 that you have that capability. You don't want them to know that you've targeted their systems.
00:15:42.000 Yeah. You don't want them to back engineer and figure out how you did that. What you actually would
00:15:46.380 do when you jam is you jam in a way that they think that that it's not jamming. They think they just
00:15:53.860 have bad equipment. They went to Radio Shack and bought old stuff or something. So why did the
00:15:59.100 government admit that it's jamming when that particular countermeasure is something normally
00:16:04.360 you would keep classified because you don't want the enemy to know that? And the answer is
00:16:08.140 they were in such a pickle here and they wanted to mitigate the thing. They just said, oh, we're jamming
00:16:13.340 it. Well, great, except now you've just compromised a countermeasure against them.
00:16:22.440 And why did you do that? Well, because the politics were bad and we were getting yelled
00:16:26.600 at and we wanted to show people that we weren't, you know, kind of feckless. So we just, you
00:16:31.040 know, you know, you give me an example when, when, you know, Sputnik flew overhead. One of
00:16:38.060 the reasons why Eisenhower didn't freak out was he called because he told the American people,
00:16:43.120 you know, what we knew about that technology and, and, and why that specific thing wasn't a
00:16:50.000 problem. But he did, did say, you know, we have to be, we have to be serious about the space race
00:16:55.840 and getting capabilities in space and our defense capability. This administration didn't say that.
00:17:01.400 So what does the story illustrate for us? It illustrates that the Chinese are rapidly seeking
00:17:07.260 to have a nuclear capability that's as dangerous and as capable as either the United States or Russia.
00:17:17.240 You would think that this administration would be using this whole story to highlight that.
00:17:22.700 Instead, they haven't, they haven't even mentioned it. And, and they also haven't mentioned that we
00:17:28.320 known for years that China's building up its nuclear capability. The administration came in
00:17:34.040 and they proposed cuts to our nuclear forces in both their first two years of office.
00:17:39.540 Right. So their, their response to dealing with this mushrooming nuclear threat is to dismiss and
00:17:45.700 say, Oh, don't worry about them trying to target us with nuclear weapons and actually decrease our
00:17:50.700 nuclear capability. That is, this is, this is why they, they're just literally tied. You know,
00:17:57.260 it reminds me of the, you know, the, like the cheating husband who just can't figure out ways to
00:18:02.360 explain to his wife how he's really not cheating, but he also doesn't want to let go of a girlfriend,
00:18:06.240 you know, and he just kind of just goes through these, not that I would know anything about that
00:18:10.040 because I wouldn't, but this is like people who are lying to themselves and other people
00:18:15.820 because they want everything to just go their way. That's their problem. And of course the Chinese,
00:18:21.480 they just laugh at us, right? They see what's going on. And they say, we just conducted the most
00:18:26.740 aggressive targeting mission against the United States of any adversary in modern history. And,
00:18:32.540 and Joe Biden's response is, well, it's really not such a big deal and really don't worry about it.
00:18:37.220 And when can we, when can we go back to China and start talking to him again? That's his response.
00:18:41.060 So was it just, I mean, is it progressive ideology that motivates them to that kind of diplomacy and
00:18:48.340 that kind of foreign policy? Because as you said, it really doesn't take that much brain capability to
00:18:55.280 be able to see how we should be responding to this and how we should be representing this to the
00:18:59.760 American people and the kind of strength that's necessary to push back against this and mitigate
00:19:04.080 this threat. I mean, really, you don't have to be an expert to just kind of come to some kind of
00:19:08.400 common sense conclusion. And yet they're going about it in the opposite way. So is it just because
00:19:13.160 progressives, you know, as I always say, they don't understand human nature, they don't understand
00:19:17.320 how the world works, they don't understand diplomacy, or is it like, is it something more nefarious?
00:19:22.200 Is it like, does Joe Biden have an interest in trying to go soft on China? It's hard for me to
00:19:27.960 understand what that interest would be. Yeah. So I get, there's kind of three answers to this
00:19:34.600 question. I mean, it could be that they're just so well that they're wedded to this belief in this
00:19:41.040 new world order and just, you know, we can just fix everything, right? It could be that they're just
00:19:48.480 bought and owned by the Chinese. And it could be that just completely incompetent, or a mixture of
00:19:54.240 the three. And, and the problem I have is like, how do we know? Because the result is the same,
00:20:00.220 right? They are completely feckless against the most significant threat to our security in modern
00:20:07.240 times. And Americans get this because, you know, this is different because the Chinese threat,
00:20:13.260 they see it in our own communities. They see Confucius Institutes,
00:20:17.280 they, they see Chinese buying land. They, they see them trying, they, this, China is not a foreign
00:20:23.900 policy issue for Americans. It's a domestic issue. And, and, um, you know, just like the border,
00:20:31.220 uh, they see this as a problem for them and they, and they get the frustration and, you know,
00:20:36.960 there is a connection here between the border and, and the Chinese threat. And in the,
00:20:43.920 in the sense that in both cases, what we have are situations where we're seeing real threats and
00:20:50.380 dangerous to American people, China essentially wanting to plan a nuclear holocaust against the
00:20:57.140 United States. On the border, we have millions of people boiling in and all the associated problems
00:21:03.040 with that from crime and drugs and, and, and insecure border and terrorists coming in. And by the way,
00:21:07.420 you know, 800% increase in Chinese citizens sneaking in across the U.S. border.
00:21:12.420 Yeah, I've seen that. Wow.
00:21:14.260 And, and what is the U.S., what is Biden's response? In both cases, it wasn't, oh my God,
00:21:19.900 here's a problem. We got to go fix this to protect the homeland for Americans. Their response is,
00:21:25.900 it's not good for our politics to really address these problems. How can we kind of make them go away?
00:21:31.560 You know, you know, I've been in this business since nine 11. And if you look at the China threat
00:21:40.720 to our air sovereignty that we just saw and the border threat that we've seen with millions of
00:21:48.040 people pouring in illegally across the border, in both those respects, the U.S. is at more risk now
00:21:57.040 than it was on nine 11. So decades of investment and thinking about homeland security and making
00:22:04.120 sure nine 11 is never again, we are more vulnerable towards a nine 11 experience because what's happened
00:22:09.880 the last two years with our president than we were on nine 11.
00:22:13.320 Wow. So, okay. So tell me your realistic timeline of events for how this plays itself out. I mean,
00:22:25.400 are we looking at imminent nuclear war, Russia, China, U.S., or is there some optimism here? Like,
00:22:33.080 do we have some time? Sure. I mean, well, look, I mean, the Chinese don't want to have a nuclear war
00:22:39.040 with us because they don't want to be blown up either. They, there's an ancient Chinese philosopher
00:22:45.620 with this idea of winning without fighting. They want to create a situation where they can
00:22:50.900 racially run the table and have the United States collapse at their feet without actually fighting
00:22:56.440 a war. And as, as I tell people, it's like, when the other guy is eating your lunch,
00:23:01.520 they don't blow up the cafeteria. So they want to intimidate us. They want us to back off,
00:23:11.220 look the other way. Um, they don't really want to start a war. Um, they want Taiwan.
00:23:18.020 I'm not sure they want to fight over Taiwan, but, but they want us to just walk away and let them
00:23:24.980 take it. That's the goal. Yeah, that makes sense. And it seems like it's working at least with this
00:23:31.420 administration, the intimidation tactics do seem to be working. Well, thank you so much for this
00:23:38.060 insight. Is there anything else that you think that just the average American should know about
00:23:42.940 what's going on? Yeah, no, I do. To me, this, this whole notion of putting politics ahead of
00:23:52.540 Homeland Security is really something we're just not wrapping our hands around. Look, you know,
00:23:57.480 we just saw these horrific train derailments in the middle of the country. Catastrophic,
00:24:04.040 you know, for those people, that's as bad as any nine 11 in New York city. We're not talking about
00:24:11.520 it. We're not responding to it. Um, we built all, we built the department of Homeland Security. We built
00:24:18.600 to really immediately respond and address these kinds of issues. And yet our government just doesn't
00:24:25.660 seem interested enough. Okay. It's as if we've, we failed to understand what's happening in the modern
00:24:30.480 world, Russia, Iran, North Korea, um, China, these, these, these people want a world without us.
00:24:39.320 And, and this administration seems oblivious to that. And they think they can just,
00:24:44.080 they can just wish it away with a couple of press conferences and a treaty here and there,
00:24:48.220 or, you know, and, and, and some green energy. Um, thank you so much, Jim, for taking the time.
00:24:54.360 This was really, really helpful how you broke it all down for us. I know people are going to
00:24:58.440 appreciate this explanation. So thank you. Um, people can follow you, um, on Twitter. We've
00:25:04.160 got your handle up on the screen anywhere else. They can follow your work. Yeah, I am on Substack
00:25:09.200 in addition to talking about national security. I have a really cool travel log. Awesome. Well,
00:25:14.460 we will link, we will link the Substack in the description of this episode. People can click
00:25:18.220 on it and find it. And heritage.org. Heritage is awesome stuff. Yes, I agree. I agree. Well,
00:25:23.340 thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. So you heard Jim mentioned at the end what's happening in Ohio
00:25:40.820 with this train derailment. You probably saw on Twitter, on social media, that there was like a
00:25:45.780 Chernobyl style explosion in East Palestine, Ohio. That is a town in Ohio. And there was a lot of
00:25:54.340 confusion about what actually went on. What is this explosion? Is it some kind of chemical plant?
00:25:59.500 What in the world is going on? You see the picture if you're watching on YouTube? I mean,
00:26:03.800 what? That is huge. That is a huge explosion. You can kind of see the clouds and see the effect that
00:26:10.760 that is going to have there. I mean, that looks like literally a Chernobyl style explosion. And yet,
00:26:17.640 it has been so hard to actually find any official reporting on it. You would think that there would
00:26:22.820 be wall to wall coverage in the mainstream media on this. And yet, as is typical with some of the
00:26:28.920 most important stories in our country, we have to rely on people on Twitter, on the ground people,
00:26:34.760 local reporters, which God bless them, God bless all those people, Substack writers,
00:26:39.120 kind of like amateur researchers and things like that to tell us what the heck, what the heck is
00:26:45.280 going on. It shouldn't be that way. But I'm almost glad that it is because it kind of allows,
00:26:52.200 it allows the democratization of information. And rather than having a monopoly of expertise at CNN,
00:27:00.500 or even Fox News or places like that, like, we can get our information from people who are not bound
00:27:06.580 to a certain brand, they're not bound to a certain corporation, who really just care about the truth.
00:27:11.940 And they're not even coming at it from a partisan perspective. However, it also hurts our trust in
00:27:16.840 the media that it hurts our trust in the government, as we wonder, okay, why isn't this being covered?
00:27:23.080 And so I'm going to do the best that I can to summarize what is going on. I'm very thankful to
00:27:28.180 my producer and my researcher for summarizing all of the information and the different information
00:27:33.760 out there that's trying to kind of make sense of what this disaster is. And so let me try to
00:27:40.760 summarize it for you the best I can. Then I'll tell you the important details. There are lots of
00:27:44.400 theories also about what's going on, people laying blame at different people's feet and things like
00:27:49.440 that. And we'll talk about it. We will continue to talk about this. I can't talk about all the
00:27:53.920 details of this today, but I just want to make sure that we know what's going on. And most of all,
00:27:57.380 that we are praying for all of the people that are affected. As you will hear, as I explain this,
00:28:01.420 like there are some really deadly consequences to this explosion. So this is summarized from
00:28:08.260 different media outlets. About 50 cars derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It's about an hour north
00:28:14.920 of Pittsburgh, almost halfway to Cleveland. Norfolk Southern has a rail line that goes right through
00:28:21.220 town. This derailment happened right on the edge outside of town on the border of Pennsylvania and
00:28:25.720 Ohio. This happened at about 9 p.m. Eastern time, Friday, February 3rd. So yeah, this happened on
00:28:31.140 February 3rd. Today is February 14th. This might be the first time that some of you are hearing about
00:28:35.420 this. I didn't hear about this until a couple of days ago when I read this in my document that
00:28:39.480 happened on February 3rd. I almost didn't believe it because, I mean, I try to pay attention to this
00:28:44.180 kind of stuff and even I did not know about it. So a train was carrying a variety of products from
00:28:49.280 Madison, Illinois to Conway, Pennsylvania via rail operator Norfolk Southern. There was no
00:28:55.180 immediate information about what caused the derailment. No injuries or damage to structures
00:28:59.560 were reported, but people are reporting things like dead chickens, injured and sick pets because
00:29:04.820 of all of the chemicals that are involved in this that are very toxic and cancer-causing and sickness-causing.
00:29:11.600 And so people are also talking about symptoms in humans such as burning eyes and nausea. And
00:29:19.380 obviously, like, these are just the acute symptoms. We don't even know the long-term
00:29:23.340 chronic symptoms of all this. And we'll talk a little bit more about the chemical makeup of
00:29:27.200 what's going on and some of the effects of that. Residents one mile out from the crash were
00:29:31.920 evacuated, about 2,000 people. Norfolk Southern said 20 of the more than 100 train carts were classified
00:29:38.240 as carrying hazardous materials to find his cargo that could pose any kind of danger,
00:29:43.360 including flammables, combustibles, or environmental risks. 14 cars carrying vinyl chloride
00:29:49.460 were involved in the derailment and have been exposed to fire. And at least one is intermittently
00:29:55.620 releasing the contents of the car through a pressure release device as designed. Vinyl chloride is used to
00:30:01.920 make PVC, a hard plastic material that is used in a variety of plastic products like
00:30:07.260 plastic pipes, like you've heard of, like a PVC pipe. It's associated with increased risk of liver
00:30:14.980 cancer. Other cancers, according to the federal government's National Cancer Institute, federal
00:30:19.160 officials said that they were also concerned about other possibly hazardous materials.
00:30:24.700 Inhaling the fumes of this can induce dizziness, nausea, breathing complications. And as I said,
00:30:29.380 it's been linked to cancer of various organs. Previous spills of vinyl chloride have shown that
00:30:35.000 exposure can affect organs like the lungs and the kidney, liver may increase the risk of miscarriage
00:30:42.980 and birth defects. So when I compare this to Chernobyl, it's really not that far off. I mean,
00:30:47.720 we might not be looking at as drastic effects as we saw at Chernobyl, but it is absolutely
00:30:55.400 a possibility that we are going to see similar things. Some of the toxins also spilled into the Ohio River,
00:31:02.080 which prompted officials to shut down water production in the area and switch to an alternate
00:31:06.000 source. Animals near the site of the derailment are reportedly not just falling ill, as I said,
00:31:10.860 but also dying. There was a whole, um, a whole lot of chickens that apparently died. And by the way,
00:31:18.040 like, it's just crazy how much we've seen that around the country, that these chicken facilities,
00:31:24.560 these facilities that are not just making chicken, um, that are, that are, don't just have chickens,
00:31:29.240 but also the facilities that are, um, manufacturing, that are getting the eggs that we need,
00:31:35.340 that they are blowing up, that they're exploding. I mean, what is happening? I don't know if these
00:31:40.300 things are linked. I'm not saying that. I know that there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there,
00:31:43.840 and I try to really tread lightly on that, but when we don't get a lot of transparency
00:31:47.180 and all of these things keep happening, and we're told that there's no connection whatsoever,
00:31:51.220 and actually we're told very little information from the government and from the media,
00:31:55.520 who pretend to be the guardians of truth and democracy, of course, you're going to get people
00:32:00.780 just scratching their heads and asking questions. Why does this keep happening to similar kinds of
00:32:06.600 food facilities? And why is no one sounding the alarm saying, Hey, we've got a pattern. This is
00:32:12.660 negatively affecting the American people. Not only in some cases, do they not even have access to their
00:32:17.200 basic needs, but they have to pay way more money than they can afford to access their basic needs,
00:32:22.960 like chicken and like eggs. So again, I mean, I just, it could definitely be a coincidence that
00:32:31.300 this is happening, and I will err on the side of that, but I will just say it's strange, and it's okay
00:32:37.480 to detect patterns. Detecting patterns and asking questions and critically thinking doesn't make you
00:32:42.280 a conspiracy theorist. It just makes you a thinking person. It means that you are accessing the part of
00:32:48.080 your brain that God gave you to ask questions and to try to piece things together. We are puzzle
00:32:53.920 piecing people. I think that is just part of human nature and how God created us. It's okay to use that
00:33:00.680 part of your brain, especially when we don't have all of the information. A dairy farmer near the area
00:33:06.820 reported that several foxes on his property have become sick, exhibiting symptoms such as coughing
00:33:11.100 and diarrhea and watery eyes. So anyway, that this is just affecting a lot of people, a lot of animals
00:33:17.060 in the area. Mayor Trent Conaway, who earlier declared a state of emergency, citing the train
00:33:21.680 derailment with hazardous materials, said air quality monitors throughout a one-mile zone ordered
00:33:26.140 evacuation, but had shown no dangerous reading. So I guess that's good. Kind of hard to believe,
00:33:32.520 but that's good. Initially, officials said drinking water was safe despite discoloration due to the
00:33:37.380 volume being pumped to fight the blaze, but some runoff had been detected in streams. But rail
00:33:42.940 officials were working to stem that, to prevent it from going downstream. And so it's just a whole
00:33:48.400 mess here. And I don't want to blame the people that are working on this. I don't want to blame
00:33:53.120 people who shouldn't be blamed. I don't want to blame necessarily the local politicians or
00:33:57.140 the people who are going there to try to mitigate further harm and further emergencies. I'm sure that
00:34:03.300 they are doing the absolute best job that they possibly can with all of the equipment and the
00:34:07.680 resources that they have. So I'm not trying to say that they're not doing a good job, but obviously
00:34:15.840 like there are just some problems here. This is a huge problem. The East Palestine Police Department
00:34:21.460 is now saying, they're now saying that drinking water may actually be at risk for some residents. So
00:34:27.960 sorry if you drink the water after we told you that it was fine. Actually, it might be a little bit
00:34:35.300 risky. So this was days after officials gave the all clear for residents to return to their homes and
00:34:42.680 to drink their water. Oh my goodness. Like what in the world are we doing to people? The Ohio Emergency
00:34:51.460 Management Agency created a controlled explosion and then steady venting of the gas. So crews in Ohio
00:34:59.620 began to release the hazardous chemicals from five of the train cars, in essence, kind of blowing them
00:35:06.160 up so they don't leak because they were afraid of an even bigger, more disastrous explosion. This is
00:35:10.940 after the original explosion when there was train, when there was the original train derailment. And so
00:35:16.100 they needed to do a controlled explosion thinking that this would cause less damage than just a
00:35:20.980 you know, spontaneous, you know, spontaneous combustion. And so it was it was a way to just
00:35:28.340 kind of control the chemicals. However, people are saying that this has been really bad that this has
00:35:36.020 been a disaster. Here's someone again, saying that after this controlled explosion, that chickens more
00:35:43.840 chickens were dying. Amanda Brashears was going to feed her five hens and rooster this morning,
00:35:50.500 when she discovered them all lifeless, practically in the same position with no signs of a predator
00:35:56.740 entering their enclosure. Brashears says her chickens were alive and well yesterday. She believes the
00:36:03.040 smell following the detonation of the train carrying chemicals that derailed in East Palestine is to
00:36:08.840 blame for her bird's sudden death. My video camera footage shows my chickens were perfectly fine before
00:36:15.420 they started this burn. And as soon as they started the burn, my chickens slowed down and they died.
00:36:21.300 So this was after the controlled burn, which again, as you saw, if you're watching this on
00:36:26.740 YouTube, that that was also a very large plume of smoke that looked like an explosion. And I feel
00:36:32.980 so bad for this lady. I mean, people rely obviously on their chickens. This is not someone who seems to
00:36:38.000 be manufacturing chickens and eggs, but this is someone who seems to rely on these chickens for her own
00:36:44.680 eggs. And now all her chickens are dead. I mean, how disturbing is that? That's like part of every
00:36:49.860 scary horror movie is like a dead animal. This seems like a horror movie. And actually there was a
00:36:57.560 movie made that had a very similar plot to what is going on that we will talk about in just a second.
00:37:02.660 Again, very strange coincidences going on here. And then there was this guy who said that, look,
00:37:10.280 we basically nuked the town through this controlled release. This was really bad. Here he is.
00:37:17.820 We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open. There's a lot of what
00:37:22.900 ifs. And we're going to be looking at this thing 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line and wondering,
00:37:29.400 gee, cancer clusters could pop up, you know, well water could go bad.
00:37:33.920 So kind of, as we mentioned a couple minutes ago, the effects of this, while they are happening
00:37:39.980 right now, I mean, again, we're talking about 15 to 20 years from now could still be happening. I mean,
00:37:45.900 this is already a poor part of the country that has been so often overlooked by our politicians.
00:37:52.000 We're talking about mostly, you know, the white working class, hillbilly, allergy kind of type
00:37:58.020 people here that have just been so often ignored. Their jobs have been shipped overseas and their
00:38:06.960 economies have been hollowed out. And there's a lot of, I'm not saying in this particular town,
00:38:12.440 I've never been to East Palestine, but this, in this kind of region, there tends to be a lot of
00:38:18.300 poverty and despair here. And so I also have to wonder, like, is that part of why we're not really,
00:38:25.940 a lot of people aren't talking about this? Is this part of why this isn't a bigger deal? And you wonder,
00:38:33.700 okay, who is in charge of this exactly? Like, how did this happen? And how is this such a disaster
00:38:41.160 that apparently couldn't have been avoided, couldn't have been mitigated at all? And hey,
00:38:48.440 is it not weird that we are seeing a lot of transportation type disruptions as we have
00:38:55.220 over the past couple of years? Because this is not the only derailment that is happening or has
00:39:00.600 happened, by the way. There was another train derailment in Houston, Texas, and another one in
00:39:08.500 South Carolina. There was another derailment. The one in Houston was February 13th. And so yesterday,
00:39:17.820 and then the one in South Carolina also happened yesterday. And so it was Monday morning that the
00:39:25.220 Montgomery County, Texas derailment happened. The one in South Carolina derailed just after 4pm.
00:39:31.220 And so we're seeing these kinds of disasters, as well as the terrifying stories that we're
00:39:37.100 seeing about planes almost running into each other, almost crashing, the not crashing. And look,
00:39:42.020 I'm not trying to scare you. Like, I'm someone who travels. I don't want to think about this. I
00:39:46.600 don't want to talk about this. But I do think that we need some answers about why our, I don't know,
00:39:51.660 our transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is failing so much at his job. I'm not saying that he can
00:39:57.960 control all disasters. I mean, things happen. I'm not saying that he is omnipotent by any means.
00:40:02.980 But over the past couple of years, we've seen a lot of this, what seems like incompetence at best
00:40:07.800 and corruption at worst. And he is in charge. And my concern is, is maybe not only that he isn't
00:40:17.120 leading well, but that he doesn't actually seem to address these issues or care about them or present
00:40:21.400 any solutions. Instead, he's constantly talking about things like, oh, you know, our roads are
00:40:27.260 racist. And we need to make sure that we don't have racist overpasses or whatever it is. I mean,
00:40:34.880 he's more concerned with DEI initiatives and imaginary anti-racist work when it comes to constructing our
00:40:43.440 crosswalks than he is issues that actually threaten people's lives. And in fact, here is,
00:40:51.400 Pete Buttigieg yesterday. He was speaking at a conference yesterday morning, the National
00:40:58.740 Association of Counties conference, and he couldn't find it in his heart or mind to mention some of the
00:41:04.200 catastrophes that we're talking about, to talk about what is happening in Ohio and how the people
00:41:09.340 in Ohio are being affected by this. But here's what he did have the energy to point out.
00:41:16.880 To work with your contractors, to work with your community colleges on building a workforce
00:41:23.720 that reflects the community. We have heard way too many stories from generations past of
00:41:29.680 infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color that finally sees the
00:41:34.340 project come to them. But everyone in the hardhats on that project looking like, you know, doing the
00:41:39.900 good paying jobs don't look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood, right? You can
00:41:44.280 build community wealth that will help close wealth gaps in this country if we can tear down those
00:41:50.740 barriers.
00:41:51.580 Okay. So did you hear that? It's not that the projects aren't happening in these diverse
00:41:57.140 neighborhoods. Is that the construction workers are too white?
00:41:59.820 That's his concern. We need more BIPOC construction workers. That's going to make all the difference in
00:42:11.180 the world, Pete. And for those of you who say, well, he can do both. He can do both. He can focus on
00:42:17.120 these diversity initiatives and he can do everything else. The point is he's not, right? The point is he's
00:42:24.160 not. He has no expertise. Remember the one qualification that he said that he had when he
00:42:31.720 started this job was that he always liked trains. Okay. So does every four-year-old boy. And apparently
00:42:39.540 his liking of trains doesn't equip him to be able to deal with the kind of catastrophes that we are
00:42:44.480 seeing when it comes to train derailments. So there are quite a few theories about what is going on here.
00:42:50.260 One, as we just mentioned, is the theory that it's just incompetence, that our federal government,
00:42:53.820 that even state governments, in some cases, they're just incompetent, that this is something
00:42:57.800 that could have been avoided, but it wasn't avoided. And I'm not sure exactly the details of
00:43:02.940 what could have been changed here to prevent this from happening. But a lot of people are just
00:43:09.700 pointing out that, unfortunately, safety is being compromised when it comes to all forms of
00:43:16.300 transportation right now. Some of it has to do with COVID lockdowns. I was reading an article
00:43:20.340 yesterday about just how our aviation industry is struggling so much because so many senior
00:43:26.560 pilots retired during COVID and so many senior pilots were actually told to retire. So many
00:43:33.140 people were laid off during COVID, not because of COVID, but because of the lockdowns, because
00:43:37.700 our government decided to, and state governments especially, decided to basically shut down our
00:43:43.900 economy and fear monger to people to tell them that they need to stay inside in order to love
00:43:49.500 their neighbor and save grandma. And so then we decimated our air travel industry. A bunch of people
00:43:58.600 got laid off. Now they're trying to build their staff back. I mean, people probably aren't going to come
00:44:03.800 out of retirement because why would they? And so they're rapidly hiring new pilots, trying to train new
00:44:10.100 pilots. And I just saw an article by the New York Times saying that it's not just that they want to
00:44:15.700 hire new pilots, these airline corporations, but they want to make sure that their pilots aren't just
00:44:21.080 white men. So, I mean, part of the problem here is that we've got a priority problem. We've got an
00:44:28.440 ideology problem. We've got a focus problem here. Rather than focusing on merit, rather than focusing
00:44:35.080 primarily on excellence and competence and who can do the job and just allowing diversity to
00:44:42.820 happen as it will, they've got their priorities backwards and people are going to suffer because
00:44:47.920 of that. And is that me saying that white men are the only people that can be competent pilots? I'm
00:44:52.440 not. I think that there are all kinds of people that can be competent pilots, but competence has to be
00:44:56.680 the number one priority. Safety has to be the top priority. Everything else comes after that.
00:45:04.200 But we've got it exactly backwards, as progressivism also always does. And so I think part of the
00:45:10.260 struggles that we're facing now, part of the close calls that we're seeing and some of the catastrophes
00:45:15.220 that we're seeing is because of the COVID policies that gutted all of these industries, all of the
00:45:20.780 people that were laid off, all of the people that went into early retirement because we shut down our
00:45:25.340 economies. And also, I think just bad priorities when it comes to hiring and when it comes to training.
00:45:31.860 And we are all already seeing the manifestations of that. And unfortunately, I think that we will
00:45:38.180 continue to. Now, some people are saying that the things like the balloons, like we just talked about,
00:45:45.100 are a distraction from what's happening in Ohio. Some people, of course, think that this is purposeful,
00:45:50.960 that they are purposely poisoning our farmlands, poisoning our water systems. And look,
00:45:58.200 there are a lot of theories out there. And I don't, as I said, really blame people for trying
00:46:04.960 to piece things together, even if it seems like a conspiracy theory. I don't really blame people
00:46:10.480 for that. That's what happens in the absence of transparency. That's what happens in the absence
00:46:15.260 of honesty and information. And when so many things, so many similar things are happening to our food
00:46:23.240 supply. Of course, you are going to have people asking questions and asserting theories. Someone
00:46:28.360 made the point, which I don't think that she's any kind of expert, but she said this on Twitter and it
00:46:34.480 was shared a lot that there are 75,000 farms in Ohio. 90% of them are family farming operations.
00:46:41.520 And there was just a toxic chemical incident there that was intentionally released with barely
00:46:46.100 a whisper. And this has untold direct food supply chain impact. And so she's not really making any
00:46:53.080 assertions there. She's not drawing any conclusions. But I think a lot of people are taking that
00:46:59.460 information and saying, well, is this purposeful? Is this, again, a part of the pattern where we see
00:47:04.760 all of these chicken facilities, these egg facilities, these different kinds of meat facilities
00:47:10.040 exploding randomly, and we are not given any kind of explanation for it. And again, we know that the
00:47:18.380 chemical release was actually purposeful and that it has potentially created more of a disaster
00:47:24.760 than the original derailment did. And so we're seeing all of this, even as there's a perfect storm
00:47:31.520 hitting the U.S. crop planning. The U.S. crops right now, fertilizer costs are soaring and protracted
00:47:40.020 drought conditions, causing farmers to plant smaller quantities in different types of crops. And all
00:47:44.840 of this, of course, doesn't just affect the farmers. It affects all of us who are shopping at grocery
00:47:49.680 stores. We have to do everything that we can to try to shop local and to try to support these farmers
00:47:54.900 as much as we can. But I understand that also gets difficult depending on where you live.
00:47:59.060 And I just want to emphasize how big of a thing this is, that since 2021, since 2021,
00:48:06.480 oh my goodness, I got to scroll down, there have been 98 instances of fires destroying food processing
00:48:16.460 plants. 98! Starting in January of 2021, the latest one was in Hillendale Farms in Connecticut, 100,000
00:48:30.300 chickens killed in a fire. That's one of the country's top egg producers. And like, we are told
00:48:37.320 that there's nothing going on here. There's nothing happening here. Again, I don't know if what's
00:48:43.020 happening in Ohio is connected to those 98 instances. I'm just saying like, we've got a problem and we've
00:48:49.700 got to figure it out, right? Like, can we say that without someone labeling me a conspiracy theorist?
00:48:53.860 I'm just saying that there's a problem that's affecting people. And we've got to figure it out.
00:48:59.020 But this does not help, by the way, our tinfoil hats. The fact that there is a movie called White
00:49:06.880 Noise that takes place in a fictional college town in Ohio was partially filmed in East Palestine and
00:49:11.600 use citizens of East Palestine as extras. And a train accident in this movie casts a cloud of chemical
00:49:16.500 waste over a town. This airborne toxic event causes a mass evacuation. Exposed people are forced to
00:49:21.940 quarantine. The film features a lack of media attention regarding the accident. Isn't that
00:49:27.720 weird? And this was reported by WKBN News. Film to real life. East Palestine derailment reflects
00:49:33.200 Ohio movie. It came out in 2022. What? The movie follows a family after a train hits a tanker truck,
00:49:43.440 creating a chemical cloud that then had all these negative effects on the town. It's just weird.
00:49:50.440 Weird. It's just weird, people. I don't. So I don't know. I don't know exactly what's going on. I
00:49:56.220 wish I did. I wish I had more answers for you. I mean, praise God for everyone who is sending aid
00:50:01.020 there, who is donating money to those who need it. Let us pray. Let us do what we can to try to help
00:50:05.900 those. Some of you have reached out to me because you've been affected by it, because your friends
00:50:09.820 have been affected by it. You live an hour away and you don't know like how downstream is this going
00:50:13.820 to go? So my goodness, I mean, there's so much to think about and so much to care about. And like
00:50:18.660 all of this, not having answers to any of this, not having solutions to any of this is part of
00:50:23.460 why voting matters. It's part of why politics matter. Not all of this can be controlled by
00:50:28.600 politics. I'm not saying that this is all Joe Biden's fault, but leadership matters. The choices
00:50:33.040 that they make matter. The choices that we make when electing our leaders matter. When you elect people
00:50:37.640 that don't care about the country, that care more about looking good to China than they do actually
00:50:41.920 putting the interest and the well-being and the safety and the security of their people first,
00:50:45.720 you get wickedness. You get disaster. You get catastrophe. I personally think that's what's
00:50:51.640 going on here. All right. That's all we got time for today. We will see you back here tomorrow.