Wednesday on FBN’s “Mornings with Maria,” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) was critical of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the wake of the East Palestine, OH train derailment.

Vance called it a potential “ecological disaster” and noted the number of train derailments around the country.

“How much money did Ohio get in the transportation — in the transportation and the infrastructure bill? We’ve been hearing about how great this is, and yet we’re having a derailment where now people are afraid they’re going to get sick because of what’s in the air,” host Maria Bartiromo said.

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Vance replied. “And we’ve seen a number of really worrying reports. Reports of dead livestock, of dead fish in some of the streams. So, this is something we really need to monitor. This could be an ecological disaster. We need to stay on top of it. That’s exactly what our office is doing. I commend the governor there in Ohio for staying on top of it too. But we’ve got some serious problems here. And, Maria, I’ve got to say, the Secretary of Transportation not talking about this issue, not talking about the frequency of train derailments in our country, talking about how we have too many white male workers instead of the fact that our trains are crashing at alarming rates — the guy needs to do his job.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor