TRENTON -- With the Trump Taj Mahal poised to become fifth Atlantic City casino to shutter in two years, a new report by the Washington Post suggests Donald Trump blames his failures in the resort town on Trump executives who were killed in a freak helicopter crash in 1989.

Trump Casino Hotel CEO Steve Hyde, 43, Trump Taj Mahal president Mark Etess, 38, and Taj Mahal executive VP Jonathan Benanav, 33, were all killed when their chartered helicopter crashed in pine woodlands near Forked River on Oct. 10, 1989.

Days later, Trump elevated John 'Jack' O'Donnell, the chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, to president.

"Only because he was the only one standing, I put Jack O'Donnell in there," recounted Trump in audio segments released online Friday from the Post's May 2016 interview with Trump, who called O'Donnell "a third-rate executive."

In an video interview with the Post, however, O'Donnell recalled that Trump had "panic" in his voice about the future of the casinos before the funerals of the executives had even occurred.

"Donald was beginning to have an immense amount of pressure from the banks, bondholders, investors," recounted O'Donnell in a 2016 interview with the Post.

The Trump Plaza's revenues suffered a sharp decline in 1990 due to competition from its newly opened sister property, the Trump Taj Mahal.

"There was this constant need to take as much cash out of the business as possible on a monthly basis, to service other debts," explained O'Donnell. "There was, in the back of my mind, 'How are we going to plan the future of this company if we're just going to take the cash out of it?'"

As problems mounted, Trump blamed the casinos' failures on the decisions of the deceased executives in the press.

O'Donnell said he pleaded with Trump not to use "the convenient excuse, that he could blame two dead men for his problems with all of his other investments." Trump refused, and O'Donnell said he resigned as a result; Trump said he was fired.

A year after the helicopter crash, the Trump Taj Mahal was nearly $3 billion in debt and went bankrupt in 1991. In 1992, both the Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle declared bankruptcy as well.

Trump has dismissed O'Donnell as a "disgruntled former employee."

"I am a very disgruntled former employee," O'Donnell told the Post.

"I didn't like working somebody who would blame dead men for his problems...I didn't like anything about his character as it developed over time there. I didn't like anything morally about him. I got to know he was just a facade. This wasn't a brilliant businessman."

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.