A bridge collapse Friday in Pittsburgh provided a symbolic backdrop for President Joe Biden’s trip to the city to tout his $1 trillion infrastructure plan — and try rebuilding his own crumbling approval ratings, IgbereTV reports.
Arriving in the gritty city in Pennsylvania — a key battleground state in presidential elections — Biden motorcaded straight from Air Force One to the road bridge, which hours earlier had buckled into a snowy ravine.
“There are literally more bridges in Pittsburgh than in any other city in the world,” Biden pronounced. “And we’re going to fix them all. Not a joke — this is going to be a gigantic change. There’s 43,000 nationwide and we’re sending the money.”
Pittsburgh’s public safety authorities tweeted that three people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after the collapse.
But the otherwise minor accident immediately caught national attention because of Biden’s visit for a speech on resetting the post-pandemic US economy, including through a historic infrastructure spending splurge.
Biden was set to tour Mill 19, once a massive steel mill which now houses Carnegie Mellon University’s Manufacturing Futures Institute (MFI), focusing on high-tech research and development
