Late yesterday in “The other Black politician who says he was with Trump in that near-fatal chopper crash”, Politico’s Christopher Cadelago tracked down the helicopter ride and the politician that inspired Trump’s tall tale about Willie Brown dishing dirt on Harris. And today in “Yes, Trump Was in a Scary Helicopter Ride. But Not With That Politician”, the New York Time’s Shawn Hubler, Maggie Haberman and Heather Knight have also tracked things down. Trump’s story was bogus of course; the only suspense was in exactly how bogus it was.
First, the ride wasn’t with Willie Brown; it was with former Los Angeles city councilmember Nate Holden. They’re not that easy to confuse: Brown is about 5 foot 5; Holden is 6 foot 1. Trump has met both men: in 1997, Willie Brown and Trump both appeared as themselves, in Suddenly Susan, season 1, episode 22, and Nate Holden’s helicopter ride with Trump was around 1990, in Holden’s recollection. At the time Trump was trying to get Holden to back Trump’s plan to develop the Ambassador Hotel in LA, and to impress Holden, Trump took him on a helicopter ride from Manhattan to Atlantic City.
This was on a Trump helicopter. In March 1988 Trump bought three Sikorsky S-61 helicopters from Merv Griffin’s Resorts International Airlines, painted them with the Trump Air logo, and used them to carry passengers — presumably mostly gamblers — between the West 30th Street Heliport in Manhattan to the Steeplechase Pier in Atlantic City.
During the flight with Holden, the Trump helicopter reportedly had a hydraulic failure.
The blogger Heligypsy has some colorful things to say about hydraulic failures in helicopters:
Fact is that some helicopters fly perfectly well without any hydraulic power to assist control inputs and some helicopters can not fly without them. Sikorsky sums up a total loss of hydraulics in one short sentence. “Flight is not possible”. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to realize that if you are flying these models of Sikorsky helicopter at the time of an improbable dual hydraulic failure you are going to have a bad day.
Here’s how the flight went, according to the Times’s interview of Holden:
“… we start flying to Atlantic City. He’s talking about how great things are. And about 15, 20 minutes in, the pilot yells, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”
The hydraulic system had failed, he said. “Donald turned white as snow,” Mr. Holden recalled. “He was shaking.”
The Times confirmed the flight emergency with Trump’s executive vice president of construction and development, Barbara Res, who was also on the flight. Res previously wrote about the flight in her 2013 memoir All Alone on the 68th Floor, and, as the Times story says, Res:
recalled that Mr. Trump liked to say that Mr. Holden had “turned white” from fear, but that it was actually Mr. Trump whose face was ashen.
Eventually the Trump helicopter landed safely.
Trump’s behavior during this flight matches his behavior more recently, when Trump expressed fear in that helicopter ride in California with Jerry (not Willie) Brown. The earlier fear is more understandable, as hydraulic failures can be serious. The later one, perhaps, echos the earlier.
So, to summarize the issues with the helicopter story by the elderly Republican nominee:
- Trump never rode in a helicopter with Willie Brown. He rode with then-governor Jerry Brown, and in an earlier flight he rode with Nate Holden.
- Trump did not discuss Kamala Harris with any of these helicopter passengers. This has been confirmed by Willie Brown. Also, Holden confirmed to Cadelago that Trump and Holden didn’t discuss Kamala Harris either.
- Willie Brown was and remains a big fan of Kamala Harris. Knight and Hubler confirmed this with WIllie Brown.
- During the California flight Trump “repeatedly brought up the possibility of crashing”, according to Gavin Newsom.
- Trump did ride in a Trump helicopter that had a hydraulic failure forcing an emergency landing, and during which he understandably shook with fear.
One more thing. Daily Kos user dlsamson commented about the maintenance of Trump’s helicopters yesterday, writing:
I’ve worked as an air traffic controller, primarily in the NE US for 32 years. I have a friend who was a flight engineer for IBM for many years & he has a friend who, as a helicopter mechanic, worked for the Trump organization. Now, according to my friend, this fellow quit his job with the Trump organization after being shorted on wages (none of us are surprised, are we?). Apparently, word got around pretty quickly because a few months later they tried to hire him back after failing to find a replacement. He was smart enough to decline.
For those of you that don’t know, helicopters are very complicated pieces of machinery with lots of moving parts that can fail. The number touted is at least two hours of maintenance for every hour of flight. Given the importance of having a reliable mechanic maintaining your helicopters, what sort of morons would short change that mechanic? I think we know the answer!
