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.
