The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.
It was Nate Holden, a former city councilmember and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.
“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.
Holden, who is 95 years old, was in touch with Trump and his team during the 1990s when the flamboyant Manhattan developer was trying to build on the site of the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Holden represented the district at the time and supported the project.
In the interview, Holden said he was watching Trump’s press conference on Thursday when the former president claimed that Brown was aboard during the white-knuckle helicopter ride.
In fact, Holden says he met Trump at Trump Tower, en route to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were going to tour the developer’s brand new Taj Mahal casino. In the lobby at Trump Tower, Holden says he was greeted by several people as “senator,” salutations that miffed the host.
“He said, ‘You know I own this building but nobody seems to know who I am,’” Holden remembered the mogul saying.
Holden recalled being a bit worried about the helicopter ride because it came not long after five people, including three high-level executives of Trump's casinos, were killed when their chopper crashed in 1989 over Forked River, New Jersey.
But Holden says Trump told him they were in good hands, noting that he had two capable pilots. “He tells me to ‘look at the sky,’” Holden said. “‘Oh my God, it’s so beautiful.’”
Also aboard was Trump’s late brother, Robert, the attorney Harvey Freedman and Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development. Res told POLITICO on Friday that she also remembers the ride well. In fact, she said she wrote about it in her book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor.”
Res remembers Brown, too. He took a liking to her, and she brought him a hat from the superyacht the Trump Princess, which she says he loved. But the man on the helicopter was definitely Nate Holden, she said.
On that ride, she said the pilots started feverishly maneuvering the equipment as the chopper lurched over the water. “From the corner of my eye, I can see in the cockpit and what I see is the co-pilot pumping a device with all his might,” Res wrote in her book. Donald Trump and Robert Trump were reassuring Holden.
“Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she wrote. “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”
After considerable turbulence, they landed safely in New Jersey at an airport where Trump had his commuter helicopters stored.
Within an hour, they were in Atlantic City. Holden and Res had a nice lunch at the casino courtesy of Trump and went back to New York. “We may not have gotten much business done, but it sure as hell was memorable,” she wrote.
Over the phone Friday, Res said Trump liked to tell a joke about Holden on the helicopter — “you turned white,” he said. But she said it was Trump’s face that was white.
“He was white as snow,” Holden added. “And he was scared shitless.”
When asked for comment, a Trump campaign spokesperson just referred to a paragraph in a New York Times article about the incident.
"[Trump] has also told the helicopter story before, in his 2023 book, 'Letters to Trump,' in which he published letters to him from a number of people, including Mr. Brown. In the book, Mr. Trump wrote, 'We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together. It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it.'"
Res and Holden spoke on the phone Friday night. They sometimes reminisce about the Ambassador project that could have been.
“That’s the story, OK,” Res said. “No Willie Brown.”
Holden also connected with Brown on Thursday. “I said, ‘Willie, were you almost in a helicopter crash with Trump also?’ He said ‘No.’ I said, ‘I was the one, Willie.’”
Before he hung up with POLITICO, Holden assured a reporter that nobody discussed — let alone criticized — Kamala Harris as Trump claimed Brown did.
“He either mixed it up,” Holden said. “Or, he made it up. This was just too big to overlook. This is a big one. Conflating Willie Brown and me? The press is searching for the real story and they didn’t get it. You did.”
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