Update On The Trump/Brown/Helicopter Story
Trump was in an emergency landing in 1990, just with another politician
Yesterday, as part of a long post on Trump’s recent press conference, I highlighted one of the more bizarre moments from it: Trump recounting a rough helicopter flight with San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. As Trump told the story, the two were in a helicopter together, and it had to make an emergency landing. The reason Trump told this story was to share that during that ride, Brown told him “terrible things” about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Willie Brown denied ever flying in a helicopter with Trump. And definitely not one that was forced to make an emergency landing. Journalists looking into the incident suggested Trump might have been drawing on a memory of a helicopter flight Trump took as President with California Governor Jerry Brown.
“We have the flight records of the helicopter,” Mr. Trump insisted Friday, saying the helicopter had landed “in a field,” and indicating that he intended to release the flight records, before shouting that he was “probably going to sue” over the Times article.
When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice. As of early Friday evening, he had not provided them.
Now, it appears that Donald Trump did experience an emergency landing in a helicopter. And there was a California politician aboard at the time. Except it was Nate Holden, a former city council member and state senator from Los Angeles. More from a Politico article:
“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.
Holden, who is 95 years old, was in touch with Trump and his team during the 1990s when the flamboyant Manhattan developer was trying to build on the site of the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Holden represented the district at the time and supported the project.
In the interview, Holden said he was watching Trump’s press conference on Thursday when the former president claimed that Brown was aboard during the white-knuckle helicopter ride.
In fact, Holden says he met Trump at Trump Tower, en route to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were going to tour the developer’s brand new Taj Mahal casino. In the lobby at Trump Tower, Holden says he was greeted by several people as “senator,” salutations that miffed the host.
“He said, ‘You know I own this building but nobody seems to know who I am,’” Holden remembered the mogul saying.
Holden recalled being a bit worried about the helicopter ride because it came not long after five people, including three high-level executives of Trump’s casinos, were killed when their chopper crashed in 1989 over Forked River, New Jersey.
But Holden says Trump told him they were in good hands, noting that he had two capable pilots. “He tells me to ‘look at the sky,’” Holden said. “‘Oh my God, it’s so beautiful.’”
Also aboard was Trump’s late brother, Robert, the attorney Harvey Freedman and Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development. Res told POLITICO on Friday that she also remembers the ride well. In fact, she said she wrote about it in her book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor.” …
On that ride, she said the pilots started feverishly maneuvering the equipment as the chopper lurched over the water. “From the corner of my eye, I can see in the cockpit and what I see is the co-pilot pumping a device with all his might,” Res wrote in her book. Donald Trump and Robert Trump were reassuring Holden.
“Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she wrote. “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”
After considerable turbulence, they landed safely in New Jersey at an airport where Trump had his commuter helicopters stored.
Let’s chalk mistaking Holden for Brown to age and dodgy memory. This flight occurred in 1990, when Harris first went to work in the Alameda County Prosecutor’s office. So it’s not credible by any stretch of the imagination that anyone said anything about an unknown line prosecutor named Kamala Harris.
And that’s the more significant issue: Trump made up a story or convinced himself of a story pieced together from memory fragments (arguably worse, especially as that could be a sign of cognitive decline) to accuse Brown of attacking Harris. In doing so, he’s attacking not only Harris but also Brown (some people might even say “libeling” him).
So once again I ask, “Is Donald Trump Ok?”
Chaser: Trump has now expanded his Biden Fan Fiction and has included it in his stump speeches.
I know our Trump-aligned commentators are really concerned about how Joe Biden is doing and think that the rest of us are awful people for going along with his stepping down from the ticket.
Out of the same place of caring, I am deeply concerned that, as the Harris campaign is pulling ahead in multiple swing states, Donald Trump thinks that wishing Biden back into the race is a viable strategy for making up the widening gap. I know I’d be a bit worried if this was my candidate.
I can’t find it again, but I think it was Brad DeLong yesterday who spoke of the press’s drive for coherence. It turns out there was a shred of reality at the fringe of Trump’s story, but what drove the press to try to provide this off the wall Jerry Brown explanation? Why didn’t they just demand the campaign put up or shut up with flight records? They do this all the time. Trump babbles on with no apparent idea what Mifepristone even is and the MSM whitewash it into a coherent policy statement. Face it, the Republican nominee apparent babbles incoherently. Why isn’t that the story?
While it is rather a fools game to try to do Internet comment diagnostics of any politician, and notably an excercise typically in self-service relative to an opposition politician, this kind of incident would indeed worry one if one was rational in analysis while desiring Trump win: there are any number of signs that are legitimately suggestive….
Regardless of the potential actual decline or not, these items which are concrete enough examples certainly are fair opposition fodder to exploit against him.
(the potential suggestion of Trump helos and shoddy maintenance here is sort of bonus sour amusement factor, given Trump’s reputation of the era)
@Lounsbury:
I think in the New York Times story they mention that Holden’s initial reaction (before realizing that Trump was talking about him) was to think “that cheap guy never paid to fix that helicopter did he?!”
Don’t miss how much fun Willie Brown (age 90) is having with this:
Asked if Mr. Trump might have confused the two California politicians because they are both Black, Mr. 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.
Trump fabricated 99% of this incident. Yeah he flew on a helicopter to review the wildfire damage in Northern California, the rest is pure bullshit.
Yet … the ‘the media’ continues to chase this bus down.
All the princpals Trump referred to as having dissed Kamala Harris (all while the Helicopter was plunging), all – Willie Brown, Gavin Newscum (he actually said his name that way), and Jerry Brown have denied that this ever happened.
This is exactly how Trump has been normalized. Assume, for no good reason, that Trump is telling the truth, the try to prove that he’s not telling the truth, meanwhile he’s moved on to the next lie.
But you know, please continue.
If Trump wants to talk about airborne conversations and flight logs, perhaps he could tell us what he and Jeff Epstein talked about during their seven flights together.
He will provide the flight records soon after he presents the records of his bone spurs.
@al Ameda:
Also too, we simply ignore that one of the two major parties in this country has fully embraced Trump being Trump – the lying, the corruption, the criminality, and the authoritarianism – it’s all part of being a Republican these days. Nothing to see there.
We haven’t just normalized Trump, we’ve normalized blind fealty to Trump.
To me it felt like the story had three main points: the emergency landing, riding with Willie Brown, and the dissing of Kamala. We were thinking he invented all three, and it turns out he only made up two.
Anyway, I assume the Republicans making fun of Hillary and her sniper fire story are also attacking Trump for his faulty memory (to be charitable)?
Careful, Matt. Trump might threaten to sue you, too.
I guarantee that you have many “memories” that are constructed this way — pieced together snippets that are rearranged to tell a story that veers from the actual events. There was a longitudinal study of people’s memories from 9/11 that show how many people who didn’t see it happen believe that they did. And we’ve seen examples of this many times. There was Brian Williams and the helicopter. There was Hillary Clinton and the plane landing in Sarajevo. Those are just off the top of my head.
That’s just how memory works. The act of remembering alters the memory and ties it to similar events.
Of course, the claim that Willie Brown, who was actually likely Nate Holden, turned to him as the helicopter was plummeting to the earth, and said “since we’re all going to die, there’s one thing I want to get off my chest… Kamala Harris is not a nice person.” — that part is clearly just a lie.
@Gustopher: Misremembering is a very human thing to do.
I expect Trump will soon claim the helicopter went down because the sun went behind a cloud and the battery was too heavy.
@CSK: Trump would never do that because he fears the discovery process.
@OzarkHillbilly: Indeed – and yet we put people in prison over “eyewitness” testimony every day in this country.
For The Nth time, the reason “Republican candidate is wildly incompetent” is not today and will never be the story….. is because all media companies are conservative now – and will always be conservative in the future.
No, MSNBC is not in any way “progressive” — they’re 110% corporate, full stop.
The owners of the media companies are all Republican, and the coverage will always be pro-Republican.