Trump's Inflection Point Began Where No One Was Looking: East Palestine

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio -- The sleet and rain were unforgiving here on Feb. 22, 2023, the day former President Donald Trump came to this small Columbiana County village. Despite the weather and concerns about what was in the air or what kind of chemical was lurking in the pools of mud they were walking in, folks by the hundreds lined up along Main Street as Trump's motorcade, filled with state and local law enforcement, sirened its way into town.

Men and women, young and old, children, teenagers and a couple of dozen Amish families all waited in the icy rain along the designated route in anticipation of Trump showing up to their town, just under a month after a 38-car Norfolk Southern train dumped poisonous residue into the air. First, there had been the fiery derailment, whose immediate effects went on for two days, followed by a controlled burn that released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air and water.

If you had lived within a mile from here, you had been evacuated two days after the derailment when a temperature change in one of the derailed train cars caused officials to fear a violent shrapnel-laced explosion with the potential of a mass catastrophe. They were also deeply concerned about one of the valves in a tank car carrying vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen, that they noticed had malfunctioned.

If you had visited here for weeks -- as I had, reporting about the disaster -- you understood, more than anything else, that the people here wanted to know that those in power would help them. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, just weeks post swearing-in, was here multiple times. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, also came. However, the person with the most power, President Joe Biden, had not come, nor would he ever.

Vance told me that Trump did a great service to the residents of East Palestine by forcing the political class to care about them.

"His visit filled the leadership vacuum left behind by Joe Biden's indifference toward this disaster," he said. "It sent a clear message to the rest of the country that these people are our fellow Americans and we can't leave them behind."

Dressed in a white shirt with trousers and draped in a black overcoat, the former president did what so many other residents in this area did that dreary day: rolled up and tucked his pants into what looked like brown Carhartt waterproof steel-toed boots and walked through the village.

Trump's arrival happened at a low point politically. Some of his faithful supporters still felt the sting of the midterm losses, in particular in the Senate with the candidates he supported in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, with many blaming him for picking flawed people who could not win over other primary candidates who, according to polls, would have been stronger.

Polling at the time showed him in a close possible race with Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who had not yet announced he was running. There were even flags around the village before Trump's arrival supporting both Trump and DeSantis in several different yards.

While the shift toward Trump in the polls would not happen for at least a month after his visit here -- he started gaining steam in March when news broke of the indictment from the Manhattan district attorney -- I wrote down in my rain-smudged reporter's notebook that day that if he is able to resurrect the magic of 2016, understanding the forgotten man and woman and the dignity of work, it started here, the day he showed up when Biden refused.

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