Trump campaigning in Montana on Thursday.Rick Bowmer/AP
On Thursday, while attacking Vice President Kamala Harris during a meandering Mar-a-Lago press conference, the former president shared an anecdote about almost meeting his maker during a turbulent helicopter ride with her ex-boyfriend, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.
“I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought, ‘Maybe this is the end.’ 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, he was a little concerned,” Trump claimed, adding that during their interaction Brown had told him “terrible things” about Harris.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten jumbled.
But Brown, who dated Harris in the mid-1990s and is now 90 years old, soon refuted Trump’s account, denying he ever shared a helicopter with Trump. “If I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!” Brown told the New York Times.
Instead, the paper suggestively reported that Trump did share a helicopter with a prominent California politician named Brown—but not that one—when he flew alongside former California governor Jerry Brown to survey wildfire damage in 2018. A spokesperson for Jerry Brown clarified there had been “no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.”
Still, Trump doubled down, insisting that despite Willie Brown’s recollection to the contrary, the two had shared a nervy helicopter flight. He even suggested he might sue the newspaper over its reporting on the issue.
But later in the day, Nate Holden—a political figure from the Los Angeles area who, like Brown, is African American—stepped forward to explain that he and Trump had shared such a flight around 1990, when the two were discussing a Southern California real estate project. Trump has yet to comment on Holden’s explanation.
At last month’s Republican National Convention, the 78-year-old Trump became the country’s oldest-ever major-party presidential nominee. While Trump regularly brags about his mental acuity, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten jumbled. Here are three past highlights:
Former President Barack Obama… for Ben Carson
At a campaign event in 2016, Trump repeatedly referred to Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who was running in that year’s GOP primary, as “Obama.”
“What Ted Cruz did to Obama, where he said that Obama [was going to] quit the race… Right? Is that right?” asked Trump, in the midst of that year’s GOP primary battle.
Trump was actually referring to reports of the Cruz campaign spreading information that Carson, who would eventually become Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, would drop out of the running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
E. Jean Carroll… for his ex-wife
During a deposition for civil charges of sexual abuse and defamation filed against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump mistakenly confused Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples.
“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he told Carroll’s lawyer when viewing an image of Carroll. Video of that moment was then shown to the jury, who would eventually find Trump liable for attacking Carroll in a department store.
Before the verdict Trump denied the allegations by claiming that Carroll, despite his having confused her with someone he married, was “not my type.”
Joe Biden… for Barack Obama
At a rally in Virginia in March, Trump repeatedly appeared to sub in Obama’s name for Biden’s when speaking about Russia’s relations with the United States. “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” Trump said. According to Reuters, it was at least the seventh time he’d made the mistake, though at a February rally, Trump claimed he substitutes names on purpose.
