Last week, Benny Johnson and his crew staged a fake water station in front of the Department of Transportation in Washington DC. They were handing out free water bottles from Whole Foods, saying they were tap water from East Palestine – the tap water that the Department of Transportation poisoned – and that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said was “safe” and they were filming the people’s reactions.

The security guards had just pushed them away from the building, when a news story dropped directly into their lap. A Department of Transportation employee walked up to their table. He had a badge on.

He said he was a 25-year veteran of the Department of Transportation and he began to spill the crazy details about what’s going on at the DOT.

He told them about the open politicization and criminality inside of the Department under Pete Buttigieg. The Department of Transportation was cripplingly slow to respond to the tragedy in East Palestine. DOT employees are humiliated by this and they know why it happened.

The lack of urgency in East Palestine was purely political, based on the tragedy having occurred in a Red State and not a Blue State. Essentially, the Biden Administration viewed the toxic train derailment as less important because of how these people vote. Moreover, they learned the Department of Transportation allocates funding based purely on politics. If the state is Blue, it will get priority. Red states get ignored.

The Department of Transportation prioritizes servitude to union jobs over safety; holding back technology that might have prevented the train crash in East Palestine and lowering regulations to appease union paymasters.

The mission of the DOT has become hyper-politicized. It’s making career appointees very nervous. This hyper-politicization comes from the top. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is not well-liked in the building, due to his absentee, weak, politically- ambitious leadership.

Under Buttigieg, morale is critically low inside of the Department of Transportation. It’s in chaos. It is an empty building with employees looking for the door.

Benny thinks Republicans should immediately begin to subpoena people from inside of the Department of Transportation, because clearly, they’re covering up something here and it’s very, very bad.

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TRANSCRIPT

BENNY: Yo, what’s up, Guys it’s Benny. What happens when your practical joke actually ends up uncovering a massive bombshell news story?

Earlier this week, we staged a fake water station in front of the Department of Transportation in Washington DC. We gave out water bottles. These water bottles were from Whole Foods. The joke was that they were from East Palestine, the tap water that the Department of Transportation poisoned.

We wanted to see what people’s reaction would be to being offered East Palestine water. Now, as we were filming the reactions and the security guards were pushing us away from the building, a news story dropped directly into our lap and all it took was a bottle of water.

A Department of Transportation employee walked up to our table he had a badge on. He’s a 25-year veteran of the Department of Transportation and he began to spill incredible amounts of information about what the DOT was doing. He told us about how the Department of Transportation was allocating resources based on the politics of a state. Blue State versus Red State.

He talked to us about the bungling of the train incident and told us about open politicization and criminality inside of the Department under Pete Buttigieg. Moral people trapped in immoral systems eventually break. They have to shout the things that are going on. They have to tell someone. And this person decided to walk up to our table and tell us.

We pray that there will not be any retaliation to this employee and we’ve gone out of our way to hide this person’s identity. What you’re about to watch is a raw video from the streets of Washington DC out in front of the Department of Transportation – all inspired by a bottle of water poisoned in East Palestine.

CUT TO: EXTERIOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

BENNY: Free water from East Palestine! Sir! I saw that knowing glance!

WHISTLEBLOWER: Send it to Mayor Pete!

BENNY: I will! That’s why I’m right here! I know! They kicked me out!

WHISTLEBLOWER: They did?

BENNY: Yeah, they won’t let me stand in front of the building.

WHISTLEBLOWER: I’d like to see him drink it!

BENNY: That’s right, why isn’t he drinking it?

WHISTLEBLOWER: Did you know he has his own dining room?

BENNY: No way!

WHISTLEBLOWER: He don’t eat with the plebes! He doesn’t eat with the rest of us!

BENNY: Really? He has his own dining room?

WHISTLEBLOWER: He has his own dining room up there. We hardly see him. He shows up, like, if you have a party or something, then what they do is they come around and they want to make sure there’s enough people in the office that day so that he has people to greet. It’s all an elaborate production.

BENNY: Wow. Unbelievable.

WHISTLEBLOWER: This building’s three quarters empty.

BENNY: These Federal Government buildings are all empty. Yeah, oh that’s exactly right. Man, I’ve lived in DC for a long time and I’m aware. You walk through, it’s like a ghost town.

WHISTLEBLOWER: It’s embarrassing. I’m in Federal Railroad and nobody panicked [about the East Palestine train derailment]. There was no scramble. It’s like, “Dude why aren’t we taking this seriously?”

BENNY: Yo, I got to tell you, we went there, you know like right away and it was bad.

WHISTLEBLOWER: I’m sure it is.

BENNY: The eyes were stinging and the mouth was stinging and we were seeing these little kids. I’m like, Man, this sucks! And I don’t care where you come from politically, no kids should live like that. Even like conservatives, a lot of Republicans were like, “Where’s the Federal Government?”

WHISTLEBLOWER: I’m now on a project for handing out money. We’re supposed to be subjective or objective. They’ll step in, “Oh, we want this project,” because it’s a Blue State. So, no matter how bad it is, they appoint these leaders of each group and then they make sure the money will be directed. That’s how it works.

BENNY: That it goes to a Blue State, not a Red State?

WHISTLEBLOWER: Right.

BENNY: So, you think this was politically-motivated in East Palestine?

WHISTLEBLOWER: It was.

CUT BACK TO THE STUDIO:

BENNY: It was at this point that we couldn’t believe our ears. The Department of Transportation allocates money based on Red States or Blue States; that they straight-up decided not to help East Palestine because of their political affiliation? This was a county, of course, that voted for Trump by 70%, so this was politically-motivated! And you have that directly from inside of the building. This is shocking stuff but ladies and gentlemen, this Department of Transportation employee wasn’t done, yet. No, no, no. The worst is yet to come.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Right away, they’re quick to blame the railroad. The railroad did everything right.

BENNY: It’s the government that told them to blow it up!

WHISTLEBLOWER: I don’t know if you know this but years ago, they made a big fuss about trains carrying these chemicals that go through these urban areas. Now, they re-route them through all these little towns. A lot of people, the press doesn’t bring any of this up, but I was here 20 years. I know this. They made it a point to re-route these trains. So, all these little towns…they shaft these little towns. These trains go rolling through. And yet, they kill pipelines…

I’ll tell you this. So, you didn’t hear this from me, OK? Within in the office, they’re saying derailments are down 15% since COVID, but we know derailments are up. They’re trying to paint that picture, so as not to bring the harsh light. If you normalize it, there were less railroads running during COVID. But they’re just looking at the total. There were fewer freight trains running, because of supply issues. So they’re trying to say, “Derailments are down, don’t look at us!” But actually, we think derailments are up.

BENNY: They’re going off the COVID numbers.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Correct. If you normalize that, actually, the number per per mile is up.

BENNY: That’s crazy.

WHISTLEBLOWER: And then, Pete [Buttigieg] was saying, “Oh, look they didn’t have the brakes! Trump killed this break rule!” The brake rule would not have been applicable, here. Everybody has said that.

BENNY: So, it’s political. And now, they’re just trying to cover their asses. Wow.

WHISTLEBLOWER: NS [Norfolk Southern] complied with everything. That’s what I hear.

BENNY: What blows me away, as someone who’s not – I don’t consider myself particularly intelligent – is that these people, look at this, they say they’re environmentalists, right? But they ignore the one of the largest man-made environmental catastrophes.

WHISTLEBLOWER: And you know, you have the Alaska pipeline. I see pictures. Alaska looks beautiful. I don’t see a problem. Who killed that pipeline? But these trains are rolling through Middle America, carrying all kinds of sh*t. They just don’t care.

BENNY: Those people don’t have any political power. They don’t have any lobbyists.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Right. They’re the deplorables.

BENNY: That’s right. They don’t write press releases.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Here’s another one. So, twice weekly, the Regulation requires a human being to walk the tracks or ride a vehicle over the track and look for defects. That’s the Regulation. So the railroads, about three years ago said, “Hey, you know we can do that better with automatic inspection systems; computers on vehicles. They measure, they shoot laser beams. It’s a fact, they capture information that’s better. This administration put a hold on all that, because it takes away union jobs.

So now, it’s coming out that they wouldn’t have this derailment, maybe – if it had been track-caused – maybe, an automatic system would have found that, versus human eyes. Probably. That’s how they do everything. This administration is, uh, everything’s for the labor unions. I can’t make it up.

BENNY: Dude!

WHISTLEBLOWER: I can tell you this unofficially, but that’s how it is.

BENNY: Man! Listen, there there are people who still believe in the mission and it gets destroyed by the ambitions of bad people.

WHISTLEBLOWER: People are quitting left and right. People are leaving as soon as they can.

BENNY: Really? Wow. Wow.

WHISTLEBLOWER: And we don’t have a lot of money. I see that the government’s printed up a lot of money. We hand out money. It’s like, what are we doing? Why are we handing these people, these corporations money?

BENNY: I thought you were supposed to have an infrastructure bill or something, right? Trillion bucks.

WHISTLEBLOWER: All this money, it’s like, what are we doing? Why?

Well, good luck. If you’re standing out here…maybe it’ll send a message.

BENNY: A lot of people have been laughing at us. Some people have taken the bottles of water. I don’t think they get the joke.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Alright, Benny, nice to meet you!