"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.

President Donald Trump quickly politicized the air collision between an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet and a military helicopter, blaming diversity, equity and inclusion programs for the most deadly US commercial airline accident in over a decade.