Donald Trump roared at a reporter over the latest lying drama to hit his re-election campaign, it is claimed.
In an ‘angry’ phone call to The New York Times, Trump is said to have lashed the paper for claims he’d lied about a near-miss during a helicopter ride with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
NYT journalist Maggie Haberman – the paper’s star political reporter, who is said to have Trump’s ear – said Trump angrily insisted he could provide proof of the near-death experience.
Trump, 78, took a helicopter ride through wildfire-ravaged California with then-Governor Jerry Brown in 2018, but insists he didn’t get him mixed up with Willie Brown.
Jerry also insisted there was no in-flight danger during the ride.
Donald Trump mocked a reporter over their request for records of a helicopter ride he claimed to have taken with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown
Trump insisted his people ‘have the flight records of the helicopter’, the Times reported, and said he was ‘probably going to sue’ the newspaper.
When the reporter asked to produce the records, Haberman said Trump ‘responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice’.
The former president – who hopes to be re-elected in November – is also said to have seethed over the Times’ criticism of his ‘meandering’ press conference at Mar-a-Lago Thursday.
Trump has repeatedly highlighted how he has regularly spoken with journalists and taken all questions, while Democrat rival Kamala Harris consciously avoids interviews.
Republican presidential nominee Trump told reporters at a Mar-A-Lago news conference on Thursday night that he and Brown (pictured) were in a helicopter that was forced to make an emergency landing and both men thought this ‘may be the end’
Haberman added that Trump has not yet provided any such records, which Trump claims proves that the chopper landed ‘in a field’.
Trump told the story in response to a question during his press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Thursday.
‘I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end,’ Trump said.
‘We were in a helicopter, going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.’
A biography of Harris claims that Trump sent his private plane for Brown and Harris to fly from Boston to New York in 1994, when the two were dating.
However, according to Brown, he and Trump have never rode in the same helicopter and he was instead doing his best ‘creative fiction’.
‘I’ve never done business with Donald Trump, let’s start with that,’ Brown – who dated Kamala Harris in 1994 and 1995 – told KRON4.
‘And secondly, I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him. There’s too many people that have an agenda with reference to him, including the people who service helicopters!’
Kamala Harris with Willie Brown whom she dated in the mid-1990s while he was speaker of the state assembly and she was a prosecutor in Alameda County
‘He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction. He’s creative, real creative. That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable.’
He went on to say that the world ‘would have known about it’ if it was to have happened.
Discussing Kamala Harris, Brown also added: ‘I was a part of every campaign that she’s ever been involved in, supported her religiously and will still do so, and I am just looking forward for the next 89 days.’
According to the New York Times, it wasn’t Willie Brown who was in the helicopter at the time, but rather Gov. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California.
The publication also said there was no emergency landing, and that the passengers were never in any danger.
‘There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris,’ Jerry Brown’s spokesperson told the NYT.
Meanwhile, California’s governor – Gavin Newsom, who was on the helicopter with Trump and Jerry Brown, said after the press conference: ‘I call complete B.S.’
Trump’s account was given in response to a reporter who asked about Harris’s relationship with Willie Brown.
Gavin Newsom (left) with then-President Trump and then-Governor Jerry Brown (right) surveying wildfire damage in Paradise, CA in 2018. Newsom called ‘B.S.’ on Trump’s story about being in a helicopter that ‘went down’ with Willie Brown. It was suggested the ex-president mixed up the former mayor with the former governor, but Newsom called ‘B.S.’ on the tale
Brown and Harris dated in the mid-1990s when Brown was speaker of the California State Assembly and Harris was a prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. During that time, Brown appointed her to two boards.
Trump told the reporter he knows Willie Brown ‘very well’ and said: ‘In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him’ before telling a story of how they came close to death in the chopper. ‘We thought maybe this was the end,’ Trump told reporters.
‘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 was — he was a little concerned,’ Mr. Trump continued. ‘So I know him, but I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you’re telling me, anyway, I guess.
‘But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. 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.’
Brown, now 90, also disputed that aspect of Trump’s claim on Thursday calling it ‘so far fetched, it’s unbelievable.’
‘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,’ Brown said.
