Donald Trump, the Republican party's perpetually confused 78-year-old convicted felon, did once take a helicopter ride with a Black California politician. Still, he wasn't Willie Brown, and it didn't happen in California during a wildfire.
Donald Trump has done the lying liar's version of painting oneself into a corner, trying to attack Vice-President Harris for having existed before she was married; he lied about a well-known California politician, mistaking him for another based on the color of their skin. Trump thinks former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden.
Turns out, however, that there was a Black politician from California who once made an emergency landing in a helicopter with Mr. Trump. It just wasn't Mr. Brown.
Nate Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said in an interview with The Times that he had been on a helicopter ride with Mr. Trump around 1990 when the aircraft experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.
"I said, 'Willie, you know what? That's me!'" Mr. Holden said. "And I told him, 'You're a short Black guy and I'm a tall Black guy — but we all look alike, right?'"
Mr. Holden gave his own height as 6-foot-1. "Willie has to be about 5-foot-6. Maybe 5-foot-5. He comes up to about my shoulders. And he's bald. And I'm not bald."
Mr. Brown, he said, "just laughed and laughed."
NYTimes
It was Willie Brown, however, who has the last laugh:
Reached again Friday night, Mr. Brown reiterated that he had never flown in a helicopter with Mr. Trump and that he had not denigrated Ms. Harris to the former president because he admires and respects her.
"Those are the two things I am certain of," he said. "All the rest of this is amusing."
Asked if Mr. Trump might have confused the two California politicians because they are both Black, Mr. Brown said, "I wouldn't want to conclude that he can't tell Black people apart, because I'd hate for him to think that I'm Beyoncé."
And then he burst out laughing.
NY Times
