Pete Buttigieg, former transportation secretary and former South Bend mayor, called Trump's comments during today's press briefing "despicable."

President Donald Trump slammed former Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg after a deadly collision between a helicopter and a plane near Reagan National Airport.

President Donald Trump slammed former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for running the agency "into the ground" following the D.C. plane crash disaster.

Pete Buttigieg was less than thrilled when President Donald Trump called him out Thursday during a news conference.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized Trump on Thursday for his reaction to the devastating incident after Trump baselessly blamed the Biden administration’s policies for threatening air safety. Buttigieg called out the president for “lying” about the crash in a post on social media platform X.

Trump said he didn't know what caused the crash but "we have some very strong opinions and ideas."

In his first news conference since the aircraft collision over the Potomac River, President Donald Trump on Thursday implied that diversity, equity and inclusion programs could be the cause, although an investigation has only just begun into the fatal disaster.

After mourning the loss of victims in an air collision in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump pivoted quickly to placing the blame.

Pete Buttigieg is looking into a potential Senate run in 2026 in Michigan, which was won by President Donald Trump in 2024.

He ran his city into the ground and he's a disaster now. He's just got a good line of (expletive)," Trump claimed Thursday during a press conference. "You know how badly everything's run since he ran the Department of Transportation.

"Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch," Buttigieg wrote on X.