Businessman Bernie Moreno, who ran for U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022 and may run again in 2024, facilitated the donation of a car to a mom whose story of having to carry bottled water while walking home from the grocery store has captivated the nation.
Moreno tweeted a picture on Thursday of East Palestine mom Courtney Miller with her new car, thanking the dealership he used to own, and from which he facilitated the donation of the vehicle to her.
In the picture, Miller is wearing American flag pants and a shirt that says #FJB and also says “Let’s Go Brandon” on it. Both terms — the more vulgar FJB, which stands for “Fuck Joe Biden,” and “Let’s Go Brandon” which is what a media figure wrongly said NASCAR fans were chanting at an event in 2021 — have become pejoratives to describe the current president of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden.
Moreno then explained how this all happened in an interview with Breitbart News, in which he laid out how Miller’s story caught his attention and he jumped up to help her out.
Miller, a mom of a 5-year-old and 9-year-old, whose backyard has water contaminated by the chemicals that erupted after the explosion of the derailed Norfold Southern train, appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight on the Fox News Channel last week to explain how a video she shot in her backyard showing rainbow-colored water went viral. In the viral video, Miller threw a rock into the creek bed in her backyard, and viewers could see the water turn rainbow-colored as what appeared to be dangerous chemicals were disrupted.
In the segment on Carlson’s program, Miller told the millions of Americans watching that she bottled the chemical-filled water and dated and labeled it, urging those government officials from President Biden’s administration and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration who told them the water was safe to come have a drink of it.
“The EPA said it was fine to drink, DeWine said it was fine to drink, but now all of a sudden we have to drink bottled water,” Miller said on Carlson’s show. She continued:
But who’s paying for that bottled water? We are. We have to pay for it. A lot of us are on welfare and a lot of us don’t have the extra money because it gets expensive especially if — does it get absorbed into your skin? Do we have to bathe in bottled water? Who’s paying for this? We are. We have to. So when I threw that rock in that Twitter video and you could see all of that disgusting rainbow-colored stuff coming up, I made sure that I bottled it. I bottled it. I labeled it. I dated it. So, DeWine and the EPA, here’s the bottle of water they can drink while they’re making us go to the store and buy this bottled water that we have to drink.
Miller also revealed in the Carlson segment that she does not have a car, so she needs to lug the water cases home from the store while walking. Miller said:
I’m a single mother, I have two children, and I don’t have a vehicle currently. … So I have to walk to the store and carry a case of water and tote around a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old walking to and from a store to get bottled water. Where is our help? And what about the people who can’t walk to the store who don’t have vehicles? Why is no one out here helping us?
Moreno, who was in East Palestine last week, told Breitbart News he saw Miller’s interview on Fox News and jumped up to help her. Before he ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, Moreno owned a chain of auto dealerships in Ohio — he sold them all, but still had connections at several — so he called the current owner of a Kia dealership he used to own in nearby Streetsboro, Ohio, and figured out how to get Miller a free car. The Kia of Streetsboro dealership, at Moreno’s urging, picked out a car and got to work getting it to Miller entirely for free so she can go to the store without having to walk each way with her kids in tow. The dealership not only covered the car, title, and all taxes and fees, they even covered her insurance for two weeks she could drive it off the lot right away.
“I was in East Palestine a week and a half ago. I wanted to see things firsthand. This is before the story accelerated like it should have. This is one of those stories that is getting more attention in week three than it did in week one which is part of the problem,” Moreno told Breitbart News in a Thursday morning interview. “So I went there and when I came back then they coincidentally had Courtney on Tucker talking about ‘hey you guys are saying that the water is safe but let me tell you about what’s going on directly behind my house.’ This isn’t down the street, this is her direct backyard. She talked about how ‘hey I can’t afford bottled water, and I don’t even have a car to go get bottled water, and I’m carrying around a five-year-old and a nine-year-old. Getting a case of water is crazy and nobody is listening to us.’ It’s frustrating because I met a lot of people who worked for me in the car dealership world that were technicians or in the car wash team or valets or porters or technicians. These are just good hardworking Americans that are living paycheck to paycheck and aren’t ready for something like this and aren’t getting the support they need. So I have a friend who I sold my Kia dealership to, I called him, and I called in a favor. He immediately said ‘no problem, I’m in.’ We picked out the nicest car in a reasonable price range we could and got it for her. The dealership actually took it a step further — they covered her insurance for a couple weeks so that way she doesn’t have to worry about arranging that right now. So she got the car, full title, clean with no taxes or registration fees — literally all in — plus insurance which is really, really nice. She was incredibly happy and couldn’t believe it. This is really going to change her life. She’s doing so much for the community. She’s doing grocery runs for people, she’s picking people up from school — this is what a community does, so it’s really great to be able to help out.”
Moreno told Breitbart News that Miller was so excited when he told her on Tuesday of this week that he was getting her the car that she had a friend drive her down to the Streetsboro dealership to pick it up. Moreno was originally planning on dropping it off to her on Wednesday, but she went and picked it up Tuesday night. Moreno visited her at her house on Wednesday to see the new car and tour her now-infamous backyard with the pungent chemicals stinging the air.
“So she got the car on Tuesday evening,” Moreno said. “She’s so funny because—she’s just a great person. We told her about it on Tuesday. I said I was going to drop it off, but she got so excited she had a friend of hers drive her to the dealership. You do have to do legal paperwork transferring the title to her, so she did that Tuesday. She didn’t have insurance so she was going to arrange that, but you know what? The dealership people got so overwhelmed but the story—remember, Streetsboro is half an hour away so this is like right in their backyard—that they decided on their own to cover the insurance so she drove it home on Tuesday and then I had planned to be there on Wednesday for the handoff but she kind of beat me to the punch so on Wednesday I obviously went and talked to her and talked to her family and saw her house and walked through her backyard.”
Miller also thanked Moreno and the Kia dealership in Streetsboro on her Twitter account, from which she has been sharing updates about the situation in East Palestine:
Moreno said the backyard has a chemical-laden stench that is unbearable thanks to the blown-up derailed train car, and that the videos showing the discolored water do not do justice to how bad this situation is.
“Let me tell you, and this is the bad part of the story, if you sit in her backyard right up to that creek, the smell hits you like a slap in the face,” Moreno said. “I mean, it’s bad. It’s not one of the things where you say a few minutes later ‘oh, the smell is gone.’ It’s like you have this immediate sensation that’s like ‘wow, this has not gone away at all.’”
Moreno said that Miller was “crying” and was “so grateful” about the car donation.
“It’s showing the people of East Palestine they’re not alone,” Moreno said. “All of America, we care about our own. This is ultimately, what people are seeing on display, is what does it mean to be America First. I think people looked at that as a political slogan, but I think what she showed yesterday and what the president showed yesterday is a master class in what this is what we actually mean. We’re going to take care of Americans to the best of our own ability. It’s our community first. That’s the most important thing. What we do for other countries comes second. That’s what President Trump showed everybody yesterday in a clear way.”
Miller is already stepping up and using the car to help everyone in the community, Moreno said, making grocery runs for neighbors and picking up and dropping off kids to and from school.
“She is — this isn’t like living in a major city,” Moreno said. “If you want to go to Walmart, that’s a 10-mile drive. So you’re not going to walk 10 miles to Walmart. So a lot of people on her street that literally backs up to the railroads don’t have that ability with childcare and picking up kids and so she’s kind of like the neighborhood go-to person. If you walk in her house, she’s collecting water for everybody and supplies and food. This is what makes us all feel great about what America is all about. Now, obviously all of this has to be paid for by the railroad — there’s no question about that — but between now and then my hope is all of us step up between now and then to help them now because they’re going to get something later which is going to be just for the railroad but they need something today. A check three months or four months or six months from now is not good enough. I have to live today. I have to eat today.”
Moreno encouraged people across Ohio and the nation to continue to do what they can to help East Palestine, and that this powerful story of a community and the people nationwide helping them while the federal government and Biden administration abandoned them is extremely powerful.
“Everybody can’t give a car I understand that,” Moreno said. “But whatever little thing you can do, as little as a five-dollar gift card for Dollar General, whatever little you can do for the people of East Palestine they feel so connected to the rest of Ohio right now because they are really seeing people care about them. When you have a tragedy like this, it’s really the number one thing that they want and it’s really about letting them know they’re not alone and people care — because right now clearly the people in charge of our federal government do not care.”
As for his future, Moreno is considering running in 2024 for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who like Biden has been mostly missing in action when it comes to the tragedy in East Palestine. As of now, the only declared Republican candidate in the race is 2022’s third-place finisher Matt Dolan — an establishment Republican with a career in politics whose family bowed to the woke left when they changed the name of the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians — and Moreno would likely have wide support should he run. Moreno said in his interview that people in Ohio are looking for leaders such as Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who accompanied Trump on his East Palestine trip this week, not career politicians of the past who are not solving problems and only care about themselves.
“I think ultimately what people want is people who actually want to serve their country to make the country better, and not career politicians who are only thinking about what’s next — ‘What’s my next race? What’s my next position? What’s good for me? What sets me up for the next deal?’ What do JD and President Trump have in common? JD Vance, it’s why he ran. He was an outsider who did it for all the right reasons,” Moreno said. “President Trump is a person who gave up an incredible life — I think he’s probably the only person on earth who would have given up that life to do what he did. So if you look at them, you go, they’re setting a pretty damn good example of what to do. What’s Sherrod Brown, right? He’s been in politics since 1975. Matt Dolan may be a nice guy but he’s been in politics since 1992. They’re always thinking about ‘what’s my next political position?’ I think people realize that’s not what they want. They want somebody who did something with their lives, are ready to serve their country, and then will go home after a period of time and won’t just stay there to make money for their entire life.”