Trump is sticking to the helicopter ride story, despite objections from Reuters

Written by James Oliphant and Alexandra Ulmer

(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insisted on Friday that he was in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, despite Brown saying the incident never happened and another man saying he had been on the same plane as Trump for decades. before.

Trump on Thursday recounted a near-death experience in a helicopter with Brown, who had a brief affair with former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris decades ago.

“I went down in a helicopter with him,” Trump said in a press conference. “We thought maybe this was the end. We were in a helicopter going somewhere together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a happy place to be, and Willie was worried, he was a little worried.”

Trump also claimed that Willie Brown told him “bad things” about Harris.

While Brown denied the account, another former California politician, Nate Holden, told Politico that he was on a helicopter ride with Trump in New Jersey, around 1990.

As president in 2018, Trump toured parts of California devastated by wildfires by helicopter with then-California Governor Jerry Brown, NBC News reported. A representative for former Governor Brown, who is also white, told the New York Times that there was no emergency and Harris was not discussed during that flight.

Willie Brown, a longtime Democratic power broker who once served as speaker of the California State Assembly, told the San Francisco Chronicle after Trump's press conference that he had never been in a helicopter with the former president.

“You would know if I went down in a helicopter with Trump,” he told this newspaper. He also denied ever saying anything disparaging about Harris to Trump.

Republicans say Brown played a role in Harris's political rise, although the two split in the mid-1990s and Harris did not win his first election until 2002. While the two were dating, Brown chose Harris, who was still a teenager. prosecutor, in two well-paying jobs on government boards.

On Friday, Trump stepped in, insisting in his Truth Social platform posts that his helicopter ride with Willie Brown took place in New Jersey, not California.

“There was the 'Logs,' the Record Keeping, and the Witnesses. There was also the 'Willie and Me' story,” Trump said.

He did not present the evidence he spoke of in this capacity. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request to share evidence Trump said.

Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and congressman, mocked Trump's account, Politico reported Friday.

“Willie is a short black guy who lives in San Francisco,” Holden was quoted as saying. “I'm a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles. I think we're all the same.”

Holden added that Harris was not raised during the helicopter ride. “He might have mixed it up. Or, he did,” Holden said of Trump.

Reuters could not immediately reach Holden. The Trump campaign did not respond to a question about whether the near miss happened with Holden.

Trump said he would “probably” sue The New York Times over coverage of his comments on the helicopter story, according to a Times report on Friday. Trump slammed the Truth Social newspaper, attacking its reporter Maggie Haberman as “Magot Hagermann.”

The Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Harris' campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday about the apparent collusion.

When 81-year-old President Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 5 election, Trump, 78, often mocked his opponent's sanity and said he would undergo a psychiatric evaluation, saying Biden was too weak to be president.

Biden has been replaced at the top of the ticket by the 59-year-old Harris, forcing Trump to resist finding new lines of attack.