The highlight of Donald Trump’s first news conference in months was his sensational story about a brush with death in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
The only problem? There is no record of such an emergency, and the veteran California politician says he has never been in a helicopter with Trump.
The Republican former president was so caught up in the drama of his story at Thursday’s media event that he appeared to confuse the mayor with former California Gov. Jerry Brown, who once shared a seamless helicopter ride with Trump.
The Republican presidential candidate claimed to know former Mayor Brown “pretty well” as he held court before a roomful of reporters at his oceanfront home in south Florida.
“I actually went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe that’s the end of it. We were in a helicopter going together to a certain location and there was an emergency landing,” Trump said.
“This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was… a little worried.”
The story was as impressive to Brown, 90, as it was to Trump’s audience, since the Californian says he has never done business with the former president and wouldn’t want to be in a helicopter with him.
It quickly became the most talked about part of the press conference, with the Guardian newspaper characterizing Trump’s “chopper chopper” joke.
Brown immediately denied the joke, telling the San Francisco Chronicle: “You’d know if I’d been in a helicopter with Trump.”
Once a powerful figure in state politics who was also speaker of the California legislature, Brown’s name had come up because he dated Trump’s election rival Kamala Harris for about a year in the 1990s.
Trump said Brown had said “terrible things” to him about Harris on the flight and “wasn’t a big fan of her at that point.”
The other Brown — Gov. Jerry — shared a helicopter ride with Trump in the fire-ravaged California town of Paradise in 2018. Pundits speculated that Trump had confused the two men.
But the governor said The Washington Post they had never been in danger.
“It was a lively ride, but a perfectly safe landing,” he told the newspaper, adding that “the matter of Harris never came up.”
Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, was also on the ride, and said there was no emergency landing or any other drama and that Harris was not discussed.
a href=”https://www.geo.tv/latest/558416-chopper-whopper-trump-helicopter-yarn-full-of-holes”>Source link
