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Donald Trump has claimed that Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and ex-partner of Kamala Harris, told him some “terrible things” about her during a near-death experience on a helicopter ride.
Now, the former has spoken out to reveal that every part of the story is “fiction”.
According to Brown, there were no critical comments about Harris, no near-fatal crash – and, in fact, no helicopter ride whatsover.
During his lie-filled press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday afternoon – his first public briefing since Harris picked Tim Walz to join her on the Democratic ticket – the former president recounted what now appears to be a tall tale about a helicopter ride he claims he once took with Brown.
In the rambling story, Trump claimed that he and 90-year-old Brown – who briefly dated Harris in the mid-1990s – thought the helicopter was going to crash and were forced to make an emergency landing.
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought, maybe this is the end,” Trump said.
“We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing.”
Despite fearing they were near death, the Republican presidential nominee claimed that Brown took that moment to slander his former lover.
“This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie, he was – he was a little concerned. So I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about [Kamala Harris],” Trump continued.
Not long after Trump had finished speaking, Brown rubbished every single aspect of his story from the helicopter ride together to him criticizing Harris.
“I’ve never done business with Donald Trump, let’s start with that,” Brown told KRON4.
“And secondly, I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him,” he added.
“I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way. She’s a good friend a long time ago, an absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking,” he continued.
The former California State Assembly speaker said that Trump’s tale was a work of “creative fiction”, adding: “It’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable”.
When asked if he had said anything negative about Harris to Trump, Brown vehemently denied it.
“It’s just as accurate as all of the other components of what you’re asking me about,” Brown told The Chronicle. “No, not accurate at all.”
He added “Hell, no. I wouldn’t say anything bad about any woman to him. I would know better. It might encourage him to take a [verbal] shot.”
Brown did once have a close call on a helicopter in 2004 – but Trump was not on that flight.
It appears that Trump may have confused Brown with another Democrat with a similar name: former California governor Jerry Brown.
Jerry Brown, his successor Gavin Newsom and Trump flew on a helicopter together in 2018 over the smouldering remains of the town of Paradise to survey the damage from the Camp Fire.
Both Jerry Brown and Newsom confirmed that encounter to The New York Times on Thursday night – but insisted that there was no emergency landing.
“It was a lively ride, but an utterly safe landing. President Trump did most of the talking, the man with the nuclear codes sat silently behind me, and the subject of Harris never came up,” Jerry Brown told The Independent.
The Independent has contacted Trum and Willie Brown for further comment.
Willie Brown and Harris first met when she was 29 and he was 60 and had a brief relationship.
The California Assembly speaker presided over Harris, a district deputy attorney in Alameda County and handed Harris an estimated $400,000 surplus to her salary across a five-year period, according to Politico.
Brown said in an op-ed for The Chronicle in 2019 that he had “influenced her career.”
This article was amended on August 10 to include comment from Jerry Brown.
