Derangement...

Mystery of Trump's tale of a harrowing helicopter ride may have been solved

By Alec Regimbal

On Friday night, Politico reported that Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said he had once ridden with Trump in a helicopter heading to New Jersey that almost crashed.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden told Politico. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles."

Former President Donald Trump seems to have confused former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown with former California Gov. Jerry Brown during a Thursday press conference in Palm Beach, Florida. It was particularly notable because he was telling a story in which he claimed that he and Willie Brown “went down in a helicopter” together.

Trump, the Republican nominee for president, made the remark while riffing about his November opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, who dated Willie Brown back in the 1990s.

“I know Willie Brown very well,” he said. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end.

“We were in a helicopter, going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing,” he continued. “This was not a pleasant landing.”

The former San Francisco mayor was quick to say that Trump’s story wasn’t true, telling KRON4: “I’ve never done business with Donald Trump, let’s start with that. And secondly, I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him, because there’s too many people that have an agenda with reference to him, including the people who service helicopters.”

He also told the New York Times,“ You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!”

Trump is no stranger to odd claims, but this one is especially odd. He did ride in a helicopter with Jerry Brown, then governor, and Gov. Gavin Newsom, then the governor-elect, back in 2018 to survey wildfire damage, but both Jerry Brown and Newsom told the New York Times that the craft didn’t crash.

“There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris,” Jerry Brown told the outlet through a spokesperson. His reference to Harris in that statement was to address another claim Trump made at Thursday’s press conference: that Willie Brown told him “terrible things” about Harris.

Brown told KRON4 that he “could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way” and said Trump “would have to be” making up the comments. “I am just looking forward for the next 89 days, I just can’t wait to get her in as president,” he said.

Newsom, reportedly laughing, told the New York Times simply: “I call complete B.S.”

Ever since President Joe Biden, 81, exited this year’s presidential race following a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June, Democrats have attempted to flip the script. With Harris, 59, as the Democratic nominee, the party has tried to paint the 78-year-old Trump as the elderly, out-of-touch candidate — just like Republicans were doing with Biden before he exited.

It would be understandable for a 78-year-old to accidentally confuse two similar names. But to then conjure an entire fictional life-or-death scenario based on a moment of confusion, well, that may be uniquely Trump.