Donald Trump was doubling down Friday about his story of nearly crashing during a helicopter ride once with Willie Brown, the notable Black California politician.
He was so adamant that it had happened that he threatened to sue The New York Times for reporting that the story was untrue, then posted on his social media site that there were “‘Logs,’ Maintenance Records, and Witnesses” to back up his account.
“It was Willie Brown,” Trump, who spent much of the last year hoping to make gains with Black voters, posted. “But now Willie doesn’t remember?”
Brown, 90, who was mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, gave several interviews Thursday and Friday saying such a trip never occurred.
Turns out, however, that there was a Black politician from California who once made an emergency landing in a helicopter with Trump. It just wasn’t Brown.
Nate Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles City Council member and state senator, said in an interview with the Times that he had been on a helicopter ride with Trump around 1990 when the aircraft experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.
Recounting an episode that he had described earlier Friday to Politico, Holden said Trump had been seeking to develop the site of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when it was part of Holden’s district. Trump wanted him to see his Taj Mahal casino, Holden said, so on a visit to Manhattan, he rode with Trump from his midtown skyscraper to a helipad, where the two took off for Atlantic City, accompanied by Trump’s brother Robert and by his executive vice president of construction and development, Barbara Res.
“He was trying to impress me,” Holden said. “We start flying to New Jersey. He said, ‘Look at the skyline! Look at how beautiful it is! And I’m part of it!’”
Holden said he wasn’t impressed. “I grew up in New Jersey,” he said. “It ain’t nothing new to me.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “we start flying to Atlantic City. He’s talking about how great things are. And about 15, 20 minutes in, the pilot yells, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”
The hydraulic system had failed, he said. “Donald turned white as snow,” Holden recalled. “He was shaking.”
Holden said that as the helicopter’s crew worked frantically to set the aircraft down safely, his own thoughts ran to a helicopter crash in 1989 that had killed three senior executives of Trump’s casinos over Forked River, New Jersey.
“I just thought, how the hell do you let your staff not maintain your aircraft after you just had a crash that killed some of your staff? How could you let this happen again? I thought, if we go down, this is your fault.”
The helicopter ultimately landed safely in Linden, New Jersey, Holden said.
Res wrote about the episode in a memoir and corroborated Holden’s account in a brief interview late Friday. Res, who also spoke to Politico, recalled that Trump liked to say that Holden had “turned white” from fear, but that it was actually Trump whose face was ashen.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Holden said he was in his living room watching Trump’s news conference on TV on Thursday when the former president told of experiencing a brush with death on a helicopter ride with Brown.
“I said, ‘What the hell is this?’” Holden said. “‘Was he in two near-fatal helicopter crashes? He didn’t fix those damn helicopters yet?’”
Holden said that he called Brown to compare notes. Brown told him he had never been in a helicopter with Trump.
“I said, ‘Willie, you know what? That’s me!’” Holden said. “And I told him, “You’re a short Black guy and I’m a tall Black guy — but we all look alike, right?”
Holden gave his own height as 6-foot-1. “Willie has to be about 5-foot-6. Maybe 5-foot-5. He comes up to about my shoulders. And he’s bald. And I’m not bald.”
Brown, he said, “just laughed and laughed.”
Holden, summing up his assessment of Trump’s recollection, said: “I just think he makes things up. That’s what I think. He never thought anybody’s going to check.”
Trump told the story about nearly dying in a helicopter crash with Brown after a reporter at Thursday’s news conference asked him a leading question about Vice President Kamala Harris’ long-ago relationship with Brown and whether it helped her career trajectory.
The two dated in 1994 and 1995 when she was a prosecutor in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, and Brown was the Assembly speaker. Brown appointed Harris to two state boards before she ended their relationship.
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump responded. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him.”
He recounted how the two had a close brush with death — “We thought maybe this was the end” — and that Brown used the frightening ride to tell him “terrible things” about Harris. “He was not fan of hers very much, at that point,” Trump said.
Trump had previously told the story, saying it was Brown on a helicopter with him, in his book, “Letters to Trump,” which was published in 2023.
Reached again Friday night, Brown reiterated that he had never flown in a helicopter with Trump and that he had not denigrated Harris to the former president because he admires and respects her.
“Those are the two things I am certain of,” he said. “All the rest of this is amusing.”
Asked if Trump might have confused the two California politicians because they are both Black, Brown said, “I wouldn’t want to conclude that he can’t tell Black people apart, because I’d hate for him to think that I’m Beyoncé.”
And then he burst out laughing.
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