CNN
By Jalen Beckford, CNN
(CNN) — Former Los Angeles City Councilman and California State Senator Nate Holden said Friday he was with former President Donald Trump on board the helicopter that made the emergency landing, although Trump claimed it was former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
“Willie is the little black guy who lives in San Francisco,” Holden said in an interview with Politico late Friday. “I’m a big black guy who lives in Los Angeles.”
“I guess we all look the same,” he added.
Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday that he and Brown were involved in an emergency helicopter landing. Brown has since dismissed Trump’s account in a phone call with CNN as “patently false.” “I’ve never been in a helicopter with him in my life,” Brown said.
Thursday was not the first time Trump referred to the incident as something he experienced with Brown. In a book titled “Letters to Trump,” the former president recalled the event as “a little scary for both of us.” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung pointed this out in a post on X on Saturday.
According to Politico, Holden said he was in contact with Trump’s team in the 1990s when he was trying to build on the site of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, in the district Holden represented at the time.
Holden recalled meeting Trump at Trump Tower before they left for Atlantic City, New Jersey, to tour Trump’s now-closed Taj Mahal casino. Also on board was Barbara Res, Trump’s former deputy construction manager, who told Politico the man in the helicopter was definitely Holden.
Res recounted the experience in her book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor,” where she said the helicopter landed safely in New Jersey after the pilot said they had to make an emergency landing. She recalled Trump joking that Holden was scared during the flight, after which Holden remarked to Politico that it was Trump who was “scared to death.”
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