Trump Mixes-Up Black Men on Chopper Ride, Threatens to Sue

Former President Donald Trump wasn’t completely lying about his near-death helicopter experience after all, but the 2024 Republican presidential nominee did get a few details mixed-up.

For one, the Black man Trump mistook for former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was actually former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, Nate Holden.

“I guess we all look alike,” said Holden in an interview with Politico. He added, “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco. I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

Even though it was Trump’s own mistake, The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN that Trump has threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting that Brown denied the incident.

Trump claimed to have records to prove the incident, and made fun of Haberman when she asked to see them.

“He made fun of me asking that in a sort of child sing-song voice,” said Haberman. But she said what she found most interesting about her talk with Trump was that he chose to focus on proving the incident over his presidential campaign.

“He was focusing on this because that is what we have seen him do historically when he is in times of stress,” said Haberman.

The embarrassing racial mix-up comes as a new poll by The New York Times/Siena College shows that Trump’s Black opponent, Kamala Harris, is now leading him in three battleground states.

The poll showed Harris has now moved ahead of Trump by four points in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In all of those states, 50 percent of those polled said they would likely vote for Harris while 46 percent favored Trump.

The issue of race continues to be a problem for Trump, and mistaking one Black man for another on that infamous helicopter ride will not help him.

Now 95 years old, Holden explained to Politico that Trump was looking to develop the site of a historic Los Angeles hotel around 1999, and—as the senator representing the district—Holden had approved the project to go ahead.

Meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Holden and Trump planned to pop over to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in a helicopter to tour Trump’s new Taj Mahal casino. But things, as Trump correctly recounted, took a harrowing turn on the way.

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

As Res wrote in her book, All Alone on the 68th Floor (2013), “Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she wrote. “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”

Res told Politico on Friday that Trump liked to say that Holden “turned white.” But Holden said it was Trump who was really afraid.

“He was white as snow,” said Holden. “And he was scared s---less.”

And the way Holden remembers it, the topic of Vice President Kamala Harris did not come up, as Trump claimed.

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

He added, “This was just too big to overlook. This is a big one. Conflating Willie Brown and me? The press is searching for the real story and they didn’t get it. You did.”