Brown Suggests Trump's Imagination Took Flight

Former mayor says there was no emergency landing and no bad-mouthing of Harris
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 8, 2024 6:40 PM CDT
Updated Aug 17, 2024 6:45 AM CDT
Brown Suggests Trump's Imagination Took Flight
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown speaks outside John's Grill in San Francisco in October. The restaurant was celebrating its 115th anniversary.   (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
UPDATE Aug 17, 2024 6:45 AM CDT

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is sticking with his story that he has never been in a helicopter with former President Trump—and certainly not in one that had to make an emergency landing as Trump claimed earlier this month. CBS News reports that when the New York Times pushed Trump on his story, Trump threatened to sue the paper. In an interview with CBS News, Brown said, "somebody has got to make sure that he stops lying ... If he sues the New York Times for printing that I said he lied, I'm going to sue him." Former California state senator Nate Holden told Politico Trump may have been thinking of a 1990 near-crash that involved him. "Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco," Holden told Politico. "I'm a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles."

Aug 8, 2024 6:40 PM CDT

Donald Trump told a harrowing tale Thursday during his news conference about being in a helicopter with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, that had to make an emergency landing. "I went down in a helicopter with him," Trump told reporters. "We thought maybe this was the end." The near-death experience was news to Brown, who said he's never been in a helicopter with Trump. Brown, who also enjoys telling a good yarn, per the New York Times, told a reporter, "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 also called Trump on a conversation the former president said took place on said helicopter. Trump said Brown told him he was "not a fan" of Vice President Kamala Harris. Brown said he told Trump no such thing—in a helicopter or anywhere. "It's just as accurate as all of the other components of what you're asking me about," Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle. "No, not accurate at all." Brown and Harris dated for about a year in the mid-1990s. There were no lingering hard feelings, he said, telling the paper's Joe Garofoli that it's "absolutely fabulous that somebody we mutually know is about to make history at the highest level that you can in America." (More Donald Trump 2024 stories.)

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