During MSNBC’s 10 a.m. ET hour on Thursday, anchor Hallie Jackson attempted to draw on the expertise of former OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab following explosions at a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey. However, the partisan Obama official made it clear he was only interested in one thing – exploiting the crisis to gratuitously attack the Trump administration.

Jackson began the interview by asking for Barab’s reaction to a press conference from the owner of the Arkmema chemical facility. After acknowledging that “It doesn’t seem like this specific incident is gonna have a huge impact on the public,” Barab couldn’t resist his urge to blast President Trump:

What concerns me far more right now is the general atmosphere around Houston, where you have a huge concentration of this country’s chemical facilities and refineries with much more dangerous chemicals....And what the impact of hurricanes, climate change, and unfortunately, many of the actions of the Trump administration are gonna have on the safety of the public who live in the vicinity of these plants.

Moments later, Jackson wondered: “Is this, in your view, do you think, sort of the last big issue that we might see as it relates to chemical plants or is there concern that there’s going to be more issues sort of dominoing from here?” While admitting that “we don’t really know what the extent of the impact is on chemical facilities there,” Barab again slammed the administration:

But probably more important looking into the future, I mean, the Trump administration can deny climate change all it wants. But the fact is that it’s happening. And these plants that are facing these huge, unprecedented, unexpected floods and other weather events are gonna need to figure out what to do about that and how to protect the communities around these facilities. And the Trump administration has been rolling back regulations that would protect people from these kind of incidents.

Jackson followed up: “Should this Arkema facility have done more, should they have been doing more?” Barab again revealed his ignorance of issue before savaging Trump one last time:

You know, it’s hard to tell at this point. I mean, obviously, there has to be an investigation about this, which is also troubling because the main agency that does these kind of investigations, the Chemical Safety Board, the Trump administration also proposed that that Chemical Safety Board be eliminated in their budget. So they’re not only, you know, not looking at what’s happening around, but they’re actually taking away the government’s ability to investigate these incidents.

Later in the hour, Jackson spoke with former FEMA Director David Paulison about the chemical plant incident. He warned: “You know, there’s going to be a lot of issues, a lot of finger pointing now and probably now is not the right time to do that. Now is the right time to focus on keeping people safe, getting people rescued....I think right now the finger pointing and second guessing, particularly during this period of time, is really not helpful.”

The segment was brought to viewers by Purina, Bayer, and AARP.

Here is a full transcript of the August 31 interview: