"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.

The audio indicates that air traffic controllers tried to warn the Army helicopter about a nearby Canadair Regional Jet.

Moments before that exchange, American Flight 5342 had collided with a Black Hawk military helicopter when the two aircraft crossed flight paths as the jet prepared to land. Nobody among the 64 people on board the regional jet and the three personnel on the chopper survived the crash into the icy Potomac River.