Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called President Donald Trump “despicable” after he blamed Buttigieg for Wednesday night’s collision between a commercial flight and a helicopter over Washington, D.C.
Although the cause of the collision still isn’t clear, Trump has blamed the crash on air traffic controllers, the helicopter pilots and diversity in hiring at federal agencies.
He also singled out Buttigieg as a possible culprit — without any actual evidence.
“Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run this Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster,” Trump said during a press conference about the crash on Thursday. “He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster. Now, he’s just got a good line of bullshit. The Department of Transportation, his government agency charged with regulating civil aviation while he runs it, 45,000 people, and he’s run it right into the ground with his diversity, so I had to say that it’s terrible.”
Buttigieg quickly responded to Trump’s blame game on social media, calling the attack “despicable.”
The former transportation secretary said the president “should be leading, not lying” and defended his performance in the role.
“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 said.
He also noted that one of Trump’s first actions since being inaugurated was “to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe.”
Buttigieg concluded by saying that it was “time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
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HuffPost reached out to Sean Duffy, the current transportation secretary, to see if he agrees with Trump partially blaming the collision on his predecessor, but no one immediately responded.
While speaking with reporters Thursday morning, Duffy said that the crash was “absolutely” preventable, adding, “Obviously, it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”