A hair-raising story Donald Trump told about almost dying in a helicopter ride alongside Kamala Harris’ ex-boyfriend Willie Brown is completely untrue, Brown said.
The former president told the dramatic tale during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday when asked about how Harris’ relationship with Brown, the former San Francisco mayor, may have affected her career. “Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump answered. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him.”
“We thought maybe this is the end,” Trump continued. “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—he was a little concerned.”
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The Republican nominee went on to claim that while he hadn’t seen Brown “in years,” Brown had previously told him “terrible things” about Harris. “He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump added. “But he—I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune, but he was not a fan of hers very much at that point.”
Every aspect of Trump’s account is wrong, according to Brown.
The 90-year-old told The New York Times that he’d never ridden a helicopter with Trump, nor had he ever been close to death during any trip in a chopper. “You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!”
Brown dated Harris between 1994 and 1995 when he was the speaker of the California State Assembly and Harris was a prosecutor in Alameda County. He remains a supporter of hers and denied ever having told Trump “terrible” things about her.
“That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” Brown told KRON-TV. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way. She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.”
It appears that Trump was referring to a helicopter flight he took with Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, and Brown’s successor Gavin Newsom, in 2018. The group were surveying damage from the Camp Fire to the town of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
“I call complete B.S.,” Newsom told the Times. “I was on a helicopter with Jerry Brown and Trump, and it didn’t go down.” Trump had mentioned the possibility of crashing repeatedly however, he said. He also claimed they did not discuss Harris on the helicopter.
“There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris,” Jerry Brown told the Times through a spokesman.
When questioned about Willie Brown’s contradiction of Trump’s story, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to CNN only with the words: “Slick Willie!”
