He's had a false memory, something people his age are inclined to get. I know, I've had several myself. You distinctly remember an experience, and then you're suddenly confronted with evidence that the event you remember so vividly never actually happened.

No doubt there are many others which you never identify because you are never given access to the contradictory evidence. Remember when Hillary Clinton remembered being shot at during a trip to the middle east? It turned out it never happened. But I don't think she deliberately made it up. My guess is she visited a war zone and was concerned about enemy fire, her mind recalls the concern, but not the fact no shooting actually took place.

I believe some of these events are memories of dreams, you remember an incident you experienced in a dream, but you forget you were dreaming when the incident occurred. But I also believe the brain sometimes manufactures these false memories out of thin air.

I've also noticed other people having these bogus memories, people tell me of things I did or said in the past when I know for a fact I was not even present when the alleged incident occurred (and I can prove it!).

To be charitable to the Trumpster, perhaps he has a muddled memory of another near miss he had in a chopper during some other trip. Or perhaps he has a confused recollection of some other event that had nothing to do with helos or Willie. Or maybe it was Jerry Brown?

Before I learned about these events, I was often deeply shaken when someone pointed them out to me. Now I know they are simply a quirk of the mind, a glitch in the software, something that can happen to anyone at any time but seems to occur more often as you get older. I have learned a valuable lesson, though: you have to double check everything. You can't really trust your own memory or your own "established facts". And THAT is what you call 'wisdom'.