Who else but a deranged person would make up a story about a terrifying helicopter crash landing when someone wasn’t even there?
If a person is not insane, he is at least delusional.
Confused perhaps, but that is equally worrying. What rational mind can fail to remember the details of a fall from the sky and possible death in a helicopter?
I was in a helicopter that had to make an emergency landing 58 years ago and I can still remember every detail, including the other passenger.
San Diego Union political writer Peter Kaye and I were covering Governor Pat Brown’s final campaign in 1966 in Los Angeles when our helicopter lost power and nearly crashed into an apartment building. No sane person forgets the details of such a terrifying undertaking.
In the above case, it’s more likely that it was just another example of Donald Trump’s ongoing, pathological lying.
And it was distinctly strange, to use the favorite description of former Minnesota President Tim Walz, who is again the Republican nominee for leader of the free world.
Regardless of the cause, even Trump’s most loyal lemmings, at 78, should seriously question whether he is mentally fit to serve again as America’s president, as a commander in chief with access to nuclear codes, and as a negotiator with foreign leaders, allies and adversaries.
Read more: Willie Brown Wasn’t On That Terrifying Helicopter Ride With Trump. Here’s Who Was There
In deep-blue California, there’s no evidence that Trump’s continued bizarre behavior is eroding his support, as it has. But undecided voters have swung over to the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Walz.
Harris leads Trump 59% to 34%, with Harris up 7 percentage points on President Biden in late February, according to a new statewide survey from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. Trump’s vote has not changed.
Trump’s false story about nearly crashing in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, while Brown was saying “horrible things” about Harris, was simply insane.
Trump went off track last week during a long-winded, hour-long press conference at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida resort.
NPR counted 162 “lies and distortions” from the former president in its question-and-answer session.
Of course, the Trump fabrication that got the most attention was this story:
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. I even went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end. We were in a helicopter together on the way to a certain location and there was an emergency landing.
“This was not a pleasant landing. And Willie was — he was a little worried. So I know him. I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about [Harris]. He wasn’t really a fan of hers at that time.”
First, it showed Trump’s stupidity. He didn’t realize — or perhaps he didn’t care — that reporters would immediately call Brown, 90, who debunked the whole story.
For starters, Trump doesn’t know Brown “very well.” In fact, he barely knows him. They’ve spoken only once in their lives, Brown told me, and that was 30 years ago at a luncheon in New York where Trump asked the then-speaker of the state Assembly for advice on developing the old Ambassador Hotel site in Los Angeles. The project failed.
Read more: Column: Even at 90 and with failing eyesight, Willie Brown’s political vision remains unmatched
Brown says he has never been in a helicopter with Trump.
And most importantly, anyone who really knows Brown knows he would never speak negatively about Harris.
The two dated for a year or two in the mid-’90s, and Brown helped launch her political career, starting with San Francisco district attorney. The two remain friends. And at the top of Brown’s list of values is loyalty to friends and allies.
“Noooo,” Brown replied when I asked if he had ever spoken to Trump about Harris. “Hell no. Not at all.”
“He’s in a total panic,” he said of Trump. “You can’t attribute anything to him that makes any sense.”
What I see is a candidate who is in a slump and so desperate that he engineered Brown’s helicopter call to attack Harris.
Brown is a black man and Trump crashed in an emergency helicopter with another black politician from California in the 1990s.
Former Los Angeles City Councilman and state legislator Nate Holden was also invited to New York — separate from Brown — to discuss the Ambassador project with Trump.
“Willie is the short black man who lives in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m the tall black man who lives in Los Angeles.”
“As they say, we all look the same,” Holden, 95, told Times reporter Don Lee with a laugh.
Trump continued to insist in disbelief that it was Brown aboard the crippled helicopter, claiming he had maintenance records and logs to prove it. But they were never produced.
Barbara Res, a former Trump executive, was also on that flight. She essentially corroborated Holden’s story in a 2013 book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor.”
“That’s the story, okay,” Res told Politico. “No Willie Brown.”
Holden said Trump “either screwed up or made it up.”
Maybe a little of both. He definitely made up Brown’s bashing of Harris.
His insane behavior should scare America.
And the puzzling question is why California’s once formidable Republican Party continues to drag this unstable figure back into the doldrums.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
