Trump, Willie Brown, and the New York Times

In a season chock full of dumb political stories, this one may turn out to be a contender for taking the cake. It involves the New York Times, Donald Trump, and, of all people, former San Francisco Mayor and paramour of Kamala Harris, Willie Brown. It starts with a set of public remarks and later evolves to threats of dueling lawsuits. As it turns out, Trump was delivering remarks at Mar-a-Lago in which he related a rather strange story. He claimed to have a bit of a history with Willie Brown, going so far as to say that they once shared a helicopter ride together where the aircraft got into trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing. Trump said he was concerned that the flight could been "the end" for them. But Willie Brown claims the flight never took place and the Times would later rate the story as probably being false. Trump then threatened to sue the newspaper, prompting Brown to threaten to sue Trump in return. What in the Sam Hill is going on here? 

From Raw Story:

Donald Trump recently told a helicopter story that the New York Times rated as false. Now, the subject of the story is considering suing Trump.

Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference, "I know Willie Brown very well." He added, "In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end. There was an emergency landing.”

The problem is that Brown himself, an ex-California politician, says it never happened.

“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 told the New York Times shortly after the claims made by Trump at the Florida press event.

As so many memes reliably inform us, "that escalated quickly." Of all of the rather wild things that Donald Trump winds up saying during appearances and interviews (and he says a lot), this is what wound up leading to threats of lawsuits? Of all of Trump's statements in the past, some of which you might plausibly claim are lies or at least exaggerations or inaccurate depictions of events, this story is the one that's catching fire? Seriously?

First of all, Willie Brown is saying that he was never on a chopper with Trump. It seems as if that would be entirely possible to verify or dismiss because that would have been a rather famous set of passengers, even if they were C-list "celebrities" at the time. Surely the pilot would either remember or have some sort of record or passenger manifest. Why would Brown deny it if the story were true? We're not even being told when the flight supposedly took place. The FAA keeps records of such things, particularly if there is an emergency landing. They track those records for flight safety purposes.

Some reporters have already been digging into the story and they've come up with no record of Trump ever taking a helicopter flight with Brown. Time Magazine found that former California Gov. Jerry Brown once rode with Trump in a helicopter in 2018 to survey wildfire damage, but no emergency forced landing was reported. (And Trump was President at the time. If Marine One had been forced down, it would have been front-page news everywhere.) Former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator Nate Holden claimed he once rode with Trump in a helicopter heading to New Jersey. A fellow passenger was found who said that the chopper in that case had made an emergency landing, but no corresponding official record of the event has been found to back up the claim. 

This would be just about the dumbest thing in the world for Trump to lie about, but it is possible that he's misremembering the incident. After all, he is still very sharp and nowhere near as far gone as Joe Biden, but he is 78 years old. If this was simply one flight that took place a decade or more ago, he could be mixing up some of his fellow passengers. Also, a chopper in rough crosswinds might lurch downward suddenly and make a bit of a hard landing without it being reported as being technically an emergency landing. It's completely believable that Trump is just mixing up a couple of events from the past. But why threaten the newspaper with a lawsuit over it? Trump claims to have "proof" that the flight with Brown took place, but he's yet to provide it. It seems like it would just be so much easier to let the entire thing drop and move on with the campaign.