Trump wrote about false helicopter crash story in 2023 coffee table book

Former President Donald Trump’s apparently false tale of surviving a helicopter emergency landing with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown wasn’t a one-off.

Trump, who told the story in a rambling news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, recounted it at least once before — in a 2023 book.

In either case, it’s not true. At least not according to Brown, a political icon in California who served as the Assembly Speaker for 14 years in the 1980s and 1990s.

“You would have known if I had gone down on a helicopter with Trump,” Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle . “I’ve never been on a helicopter with Trump.”

Trump used the anecdote to take a swipe at a surging Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that the former mayor told him “terrible things” about her.

Brown, who briefly dated Harris in the 1990s and appointed her to two state commissions when she was a prosecutor, says that didn’t happen either. “It’s just as accurate as all of the other components of what you’re asking me about,” he told the Chronicle. “No, not accurate at all.”

The 90-year-old former mayor did not respond to a request for comment. He apparently wasn’t asked about the reference to the helicopter incident in the book.

“I knew Willie Brown a long time ago. He was a hot politician and had a great ‘way.’ We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together,” Trump wrote. “It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it.”

Journalists have speculated that Trump in his news conference may have mistaken Willie Brown with the former California Gov. Jerry Brown, with whom he did fly on a helicopter. The aircraft, however, did not make an emergency landing.

“There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris,” the former California governor said in a statement.

The New York Times reported that Trump insisted in an interview Friday that he has records of a bad helicopter landing with Willie Brown and threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting otherwise.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lara Korte and Renee Salinas contributed to this report.