Brit Hume Defends Biden’s Trip to Ukraine as Conservatives Fume He’s Not in East Palestine Instead

Fox News Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume defended President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine after conservatives slammed him for not visiting the site of a train derailment in Ohio earlier this month.

A Norfolk Southern train ran off the tracks on Feb. 3, spilling toxic chemicals in East Palestine. Residents have reported experiencing headaches and seeing dead fish in local waterways.

Many conservatives have called on Biden to visit the area, and further scolded the president for making a surprise trip to Ukraine this week instead.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to visit the town on Thursday.

On Wednesday’s Special Report on Fox News, anchor Bret Baier noted that despite the uproar among Biden’s critics, high-ranking officials under then-President Donald Trump also did not visit derailment sites. That included fatal ones, which East Palestine’s is not.

“There were train derailments in the Trump administration that actually had fatalities that didn’t have a visit by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao,” Baier said. “But this seems to have some momentum about the administration and its reaction to this derailment in particular.”

Hume replied by calling such visits mere “political gestures.”

“The key thing always is, what if anything is the administration obliged to do when something like this happens?” he said. “Visits by officials are nice, but they’re essentially political gestures. I mean, I don’t think the administration’s policies or actions toward East Palestine would be any different if more officials had gone there.”

He said critics who are juxtaposing Biden’s trip to Ukraine with his lack of a visit to East Palestine are missing the mark:

“I completely reject the parallel that’s been drawn between his going to Ukraine and not going – so far, at least – to East Palestine,” he continued. “The federal government – preeminently – has a responsibility for our national defense. There’s no private sector involvement in that except [in] the sense that they make weapons and there’s no state and local government involved in that. It is the federal government’s job. And when the president is doing that job, he’s doing it the key and foremost task of his presidency.”

Hume concluded by saying that from a policy standpoint, “it doesn’t make much difference” whether Biden or Buttigieg visit the derailment site.

Watch above via Fox News.