A California Democrat said he believes Donald Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown after the former president shared a wild story on Thursday about a helicopter ride with Brown that resulted in an “emergency landing.”
“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco, I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles,” said Nate Holden, who served as a Los Angeles city councilman and California state senator, in an interview with Politico on Friday.
“I guess we all look alike.”
Trump, in a rambling press conference at Mar-a-Lago, claimed he went “down in a helicopter” with Brown and thought it was “the end.” He added that it was “not a pleasant landing” and Brown was “a little concerned” at the time.
Holden, 95, has since revealed that Trump may have been thinking of him all along.
Holden recalled getting in contact with Trump, who was known as a developer and businessman, in the 1990s as he was looking to renovate the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
He met the now-Republican nominee at Trump Tower ahead of a trip to Atlantic City to check out the Taj Mahal casino.
Holden was concerned as the ride was “not long after” a helicopter crash killed several top executives at Trump’s casinos in 1989, Politico noted, but Trump assured the California Democrat they’d be fine.
Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res, who was on the helicopter ride, told Politico that Holden was the man in the aircraft and pointed to her recollection of the incident in her 2013 book.
Res wrote that she saw the co-pilot “pumping a device with all his might” in the cockpit before the pilot told passengers they had to make an emergency landing.
“By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy,” Res wrote.
The group eventually touched down in Atlantic City and, as Res revealed to Politico, Trump used to joke that she “turned white” during the episode.
“He was white as snow,” said Res of Trump. “And he was scared shitless.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson, in a comment to Politico, said the former president referred to the helicopter story in his “Letters to Trump” book last year where he claimed Brown — whose letter makes an appearance — was with him during an “emergency” landing.
The former president took to his Truth Social platform late Friday and cited an article that refers to Brown, who wrote in a SFGate column back in 2013 that he recalls Trump once sending a private jet to Boston to pick him up for lunch.
“He’s just angling for another ride in Trump’s jet (helicopter!). But now Willie doesn’t remember? No, he remembers!” Trump insisted.
Brown made no reference to an “emergency landing” when recalling the jet trip in the column.
Holden told Politico that he’s spoken with Brown since Trump’s telling of the helicopter story and noted that people on the ride weren’t critical of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Republican nominee claimed on Thursday.
Brown had dated Harris for roughly a year in the mid-1990s.
“He either mixed it up. Or, he made it up,” Holden said of Trump.