California Democrat Makes Revelation About Trump's Wild Helicopter Story

A California Democrat said he believes Donald Trump confused him with onetime San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown (D) after the former president shared a wild story 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 member of the Los Angeles City Council and a California state senator, in an interview with Politico on Friday.

“I guess we all look alike.”

Trump, in a rambling press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, said 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.

Brown later disputed the claim and said Trump was “obviously wrong,” before Holden revealed that Trump may have been thinking of him all along.

Holden recalled getting in contact with Trump in the 1990s as the businessman was looking to develop the site of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

He said that he met Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, at Trump Tower on the way to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to check out his Taj Mahal casino.

Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res, who was on their helicopter ride, told Politico that Holden was the man in the aircraft and said she recounted the incident in a 2013 book .

Res wrote that she saw a co-pilot “pumping a device with all his might” in the cockpit before passengers were told they had to make an emergency landing.

The group eventually touched down in New Jersey and, as Res told Politico, Trump used to joke that Holden “turned white” during the episode, even though she said it was Trump who was actually pale.

“He was white as snow,” said Res. “And he was scared shitless.”

A Trump campaign spokesperson, in a comment to Politico, said the former president referred to the helicopter story last year in his “Letters to Trump” book, in which he said Brown was with him during an emergency landing.

The former president took to his Truth Social platform late Friday and suggested that Brown had spoken before about a ride in a Trump aircraft. Brown had recalled in a SFGate column in 2013 that Trump once sent a private jet to Boston to pick him up for lunch. He did not write about an “emergency landing” in the column.

“He’s just angling for another ride in Trump’s jet (helicopter!). But now Willie doesn’t remember? No, he remembers!” Trump insisted.

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 Kamala Harris, the current vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, as Trump had claimed on Thursday.

Brown dated Harris in the mid-1990s.

“He either mixed it up ... Or, he made it up,” Holden said of Trump.

Read more at Politico .