Former President Donald Trump is threatening to sue the New York Times for a helicopter-related fact-check and doubling down on his bizarre and disprovable claim at a Thursday press conference that he had almost died in a near-crash with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
The tall tale, first told in the rambling press conference when a reporter asked Trump a question implying Vice President Kamala Harris’ career was boosted by a relationship with Brown, was immediately disproven by a New York Times analysis, which concluded that Trump was talking about Jerry Brown, the former Governor of California, not Willie Brown.
Moreso, the trip Trump was seemingly referencing went without a hitch, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was also a passenger, said.
But this set of events seemingly isn’t sitting right with the presidential candidate. Per the New York Times, Trump phoned in to express his grievances with the exposé.
“We have the flight records of the helicopter,” Trump told the Times, claiming that he and Willie Brown had landed “in a field.”
Trump also shouted that he is “probably going to sue” over the Times article.
Asked to produce the records, the 78-year-old reportedly responded “mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice.”
Trump, who survived a much more extensively documented brush with aeronautics issues on Friday evening ahead of a Montana rally, was dismissed directly by Brown, who told the Times on Thursday that he didn’t recall such an incident.
“You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!” the former mayor said.