Donald Trump visited the site of a major freight train accident in the US state of Ohio in 2023 to criticize the handling of the incident by the Biden administration. But social media posts claiming the US president recently promised a new investigation into the disaster from the Oval Office are false; they share an altered video first spread by an account which says its content is satirical.

"Trump just said the quiet part out loud. Again," claims a May 8, 2025 post on X. In the video, Trump appears to say: "East Palestine, Ohio. It was the largest environmental terror attack in world history and it was an inside job."

He goes on to threaten the death penalty for anyone found responsible for the February 2023 train derailment which set off a days-long fire and resulted in the release of hazardous chemicals including vinyl chloride.

The claim echoes baseless conspiracy theories which circulated just following the toxic spill, with many implying that the derailment was planned.

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Following a year-long investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board said a rail car's defective wheel bearing caused the derailment and found no evidence of foul play (archived here). In its June 2024 report the agency said: "Overheated wheel bearings are a common cause of rail accidents" and the systems in place to detect an issue did not warn the crew to slow down before it was too late (archived here).

The US government reached a more than $310 million...

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