‘I guess we all look alike’: Trump accused of mixing up Black politicians in helicopter story

Nate Holden, the former Los Angeles city council member and California state senator, said that he was on the helicopter ride with Donald Trump that was forced to make an emergency landing.

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In an interview with Politico on Friday, Holden, who is now 95, referred to the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, who Trump insisted was on the helicopter ride, saying: “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco … I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

He added: “I guess we all look alike.”

Holden’s interview followed Trump’s press conference on Thursday, in which the former president claimed to “know Willie Brown very well” and recalled an alleged story in which he “went down in a helicopter with him”.

Trump said: “We thought, maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was … a little concerned. So I know him pretty well.”

Shortly after the press conference, Brown spoke to San Francisco-based radio station KRON4 and denied the story, saying: “I’ve never done business with Donald Trump, let’s start with that. And secondly, I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him. There’s too many people that have an agenda with reference to him, including the people who service helicopters!”

Reports ultimately emerged that the helicopter ride in question was a 2018 one during which Trump and then California governor Jerry Brown inspected wildfire damage.

Then governor-elect Gavin Newsom was also on that ride. Speaking to the New York Times, Newsom said: “I call complete BS. I was on a helicopter with Jerry Brown and Trump, and it didn’t go down.”

Holden, in the Politico interview, recalled a helicopter ride with Trump that he believes happened in 1990; he told the outlet that he had been in touch with Trump because Trump was trying to build on the site of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles – an area Holden represented at the time.

Holden added that he met Trump at Trump Tower and they were then on their way to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were going to tour Trump’s Taj Mahal casino.

Trump’s late brother Robert, the attorney Harvey Freedman and Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice-president of construction and development, were alongside Holden and Trump, Politico said.

Res confirmed to the outlet that the man in question was definitely Holden.

In her book All Alone on the 68th Floor, which Politico reviewed, Res recalled the helicopter ride, writing: “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.”

“Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she continued, writing, “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”

Donald and Robert Trump were both reassuring Holden, who told Politico that it was Donald Trump who “was white as snow … [and] scared shitless”.

The Guardian has contacted Holden for comment.