Joe Rogan called out Pete Buttigieg for suffering a "profound lack of understanding" after the transportation secretary implied there were too many white people on construction sites in America and dawdled in addressing the ecological disaster that rocked East Palestine, Ohio.

The podcaster's rebuke, offered on the Feb. 15 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," which featured Spectator columnist Bridget Phetasy, appeared to strike both at Buttigieg's and the Biden administration's prioritization of phantasmal social issues over dire realities faced by American citizens.

What are the details?

Until Monday, Buttigieg refrained from speaking publicly about the catastrophe that unfolded Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio. While the derailment of a train comprising 150 cars and containing toxic materials may have been of interest to the transportation secretary, who oversees the Federal Railroad Administration, Buttigieg waited ten days to address the matter.

He did not appear to do so, however, until first seizing upon an opportunity to decry the a lack of diversity in construction.

The transportation secretary told the National Association of Counties Conference, "We have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them, but everyone in the hard hats on that project, doing the good paying jobs, don't look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood."

\u201cButtigieg made no mention of the Ohio train derailment while speaking at a conference this morning but did find the time to say that there are too many white people who work construction.\u201d

— Greg Price (@Greg Price) 1676307025

Buttigieg's remarks echoed sentiments he previously expressed, including the notion that American highways were "racist."

After advancing the borderline segregationist claim Monday that workers' races should match the racial composition of the neighborhoods in which they are employed, Buttigieg finally opined on the derailment in Ohio, suggesting he would "continue to be concerned about the impacts" in a Twitter post.

\u201cI continue to be concerned about the impacts of the Feb 3 train derailment near East Palestine, OH, and the effects on families in the ten days since their lives were upended through no fault of their own. It\u2019s important that families have access to useful & accurate information:\u201d

— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@Secretary Pete Buttigieg) 1676337892

Besides Buttigieg's delay in tackling a disaster that unfolded under his purview — the kind of disaster his direct reports were tasked with helping to prevent — Rogan took issue with the Democratic official's alleged dearth of understanding about skilled labor.

"Do you know that he gave a speech the other day about how there’s too many white people working in construction sites, where these construction sites are set up in these communities, where the people in the community could benefit from it, which shows a profound lack of understanding of skilled labor," Rogan told Phetasy.

"Because if you’re talking about people that are carpenters, people that are plumbers, and people that are electricians, and people that are framers, roofers, like that’s skilled labor. You have to hire people that are really good at that, and if they don’t exist in that community, you have to hire them from outside that community," said Rogan. "That's why those unions are important, that's why it's important that, look, if you see what happens when you have unskilled labor and unskilled people working on buildings, you have f***ing disasters."

Rogan slammed more than Buttigieg's intimation that workers' immutable characteristics, not their skills, are of paramount concern.

"The fact that he talked about that, and he didn't talk about this derailment, this derailment should be, but the derailment's a colossal failure on the part of the Transportation Department," said the podcaster.

Joe Rogan has long been antipathetic to the Biden administration's transportation secretary.

In 2021, again in conversation with Phetasy, Rogan ridiculed Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave to sloth around with the child he and his "husband" adopted.

In response to Phetasy's claim that some European nations were normalizing protracted paternity leaves for fathers, Rogan said, "We’re not in Europe, and for America, this is a new concept. … When someone in government, who is a man, who didn’t give birth, and there is two of them, and they both are off work and they get free money ... what happens?"

Fox News Digital noted that Rogan is not alone in questioning Buttigieg's apparent trend of sporadic absenteeism.

East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway was asked by a resident at a town hall on Wednesday where the transportation secretary had been during the crisis. He replied, "I don't know. Your guess is as good as me."

East Palestine Train Derailment: Aftermath of the Ohio Chemical Spill youtu.be

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