U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg gave his first televised remarks on the East Palestine train derailment to 21 News Thursday.

Buttigieg spoke with Madison Tromler on 21 News at 5 p.m., touching on potential railroad safety regulations among other topics.

Buttigieg has been called upon to reinstate railway safety regulations from the Obama administration in the aftermath of the East Palestine train derailment, but he said the ability to do that was stripped away by Congress.

He told 21 News reinstating those regulations is the right conversation to have at this point.

Buttigieg said he's looking to NTSB for indications of things that would have made a difference in this case.

There have been questions about why Buttigieg did not address the disaster for more than a week. We asked him about this and he said USDOT was on the ground within hours.

"We had the Federal Rail Administration and the Pipeline Hazardous Material Safety Administration folks in contact and being helpful to NTSB, and that was my primary concern in the first hours of this," Buttigieg said.

21 News also asked if Buttigieg would make the trip to East Palestine to see things firsthand.

"I'm certainly interested in getting to know the residents of East Palestine and the people who have been impacted by this, and making sure that we take the lessons learned from this and fit it into the bigger picture of rail safety," he said.

When asked again if he would be making a trip to East Palestine, Buttigieg said he hoped he'll have the chance to visit.

You can watch the full interview by clicking on the video above.