Whether delusional or confused, Trump is unfit for the White House

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump.

By George SkeltonCapitol Journal Columnist

Aug. 15, 2024 3 AM PT

SACRAMENTO — Who except a deranged person would concoct a story about being in a scary helicopter emergency landing with a guy who wasn’t even there?

If not deranged, that person is at least delusional.

Maybe confused, but that’s just as worrisome. What rational mind can’t remember the details of plummeting from the sky and facing possible death in a chopper?

I was riding in a helicopter that was forced to make an emergency landing 58 years ago and still remember every detail, including the other passenger.

Political writer Peter Kaye of the San Diego Union and I were covering Gov. Pat Brown’s last 1966 campaign swing in Los Angeles when our chopper lost power and almost smacked into an apartment building. A sound person doesn’t forget specifics of such a frightening venture.

More likely in the above case, it was just another example of Donald Trump’s perpetual, pathological lying.

And it was clearly weird, to use Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s favorite description of the former president, who again is the Republican nominee for leader of the free world.

Regardless of the root cause, even the 78-year-old Trump’s most loyal lemmings should seriously wonder about his mental fitness to again serve as America’s president — its commander in chief with access to nuclear codes and our negotiator with foreign leaders, allies and adversaries alike.

In deep blue California, there’s no evidence that Trump’s continued bizarre behavior is eroding his support, such as it is. But undecided voters have been shifting to the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Walz.

Harris leads Trump by 59% to 34%, with Harris running 7 percentage points higher than President Biden did in late February, according to a new state survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. Trump’s vote hasn’t changed.

Trump’s inaccurate yarn about almost crashing in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown while Brown was telling “terrible things” about Harris was just nutty.

Trump went off the rails during a rambling, hourlong news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort last week.

NPR counted 162 “lies and distortions” by the former president in his Q&A.

Trump’s fabrication that got the most attention, of course, was this spiel:

“Well, 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 was — he was a little concerned. So I know him. I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about [Harris]. He was not a fan of hers very much at that point.”

First , this showed Trump’s stupidity. He didn’t realize — or perhaps didn’t care — that reporters would immediately call Brown, 90, who debunked the entire story.

To start with, Trump does not know Brown “very well.” In fact, he barely knows him at all. They’ve talked only once in their lives, Brown told me, and that was 30 years ago at a New York lunch where Trump sought the then-state Assembly speaker’s advice on trying to develop the old Ambassador Hotel site in Los Angeles. The project collapsed.

Brown says he has never been in a helicopter with Trump.

Most importantly, anyone who really knows Brown knows he would never badmouth Harris.

The two dated for a year or two in the mid-1990s and Brown helped launch her political career, starting with San Francisco district attorney. The two remain friendly. And at the top of Brown’s values list is loyalty to friends and allies.

“Noooooo,” Brown replied when I asked whether he had ever talked to Trump about Harris. “Hell, no. Not at all.”

“He’s in total panicsville,” he said of Trump. “You can’t attribute anything that equates to logic to him.”

What I see is a slumping candidate so desperate that he invented Brown’s chopper conversation to take a swipe at Harris.

Brown is a Black man and Trump did go down in an emergency helicopter landing with another Black California politician in the 1990s.

Nate Holden, a former L.A. City Council member and state legislator, also was invited to New York — separately from Brown — to discuss the Ambassador project with Trump.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m the tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

“As they say, we all look the same,” Holden, 95, told Times reporter Don Lee, laughing.

Trump incredulously continued to insist it was Brown aboard the crippled chopper and claimed he had maintenance records and logs to prove it. But they’ve never been produced.

Barbara Res, once a top Trump executive, was also on that flight. She essentially confirmed Holden’s account in a 2013 book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor.”

“That’s the story, OK,” Res told Politico. “No Willie Brown.”

Holden said Trump “either mixed it up or he made it up.”

Maybe a little of both. He certainly made up Brown’s bashing of Harris.

His unhinged pattern of loony behavior should scare America.

And the puzzling question is why the once-formidable California GOP keeps following this unstable character into a sump.