Latest news in US: President Donald Trump's younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. However, the cause of death for the president's younger brother was not disclosed when it was announced he died.
His death came just about 24
hours after it was announced Friday that he had been hospitalized in New York
City. But details about Trump’s cause of death did not include how he died — an
omission that was seen as glaring to many and quickly gave way to speculation
across social media as the nation grapples with the lingering coronavirus pandemic.
The
president visited his brother at a New York City hospital on Friday after White
House officials said he had become seriously ill. Officials did not immediately
release a cause of death.
"It
is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully
passed away tonight," Donald Trump said in a statement. “He was not just
my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet
again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in
peace.”
The
youngest of the Trump siblings had remained close to the 74-year-old president
and, as recently as June, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that
unsuccessfully sought to stop publication of a tell-all book by the president’s
niece, Mary.
Robert
Trump had reportedly been hospitalized in the intensive care unit for several
days that same month.
Both
longtime businessmen, Robert and Donald had strikingly different personalities.
Donald Trump once described his younger brother as “much quieter and easygoing
than I am,” and "the only guy in my life whom I ever call ‘honey.’”
Robert
Trump began his career on Wall Street working in corporate finance but later
joined the family business, managing real estate holdings as a top executive in
the Trump Organization.
“When
he worked in the Trump Organization, he was known as the nice Trump,"
Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer, told The Associated Press. “Robert was
the one people would try to get to intervene if there was a problem.”
Robert
Stewart Trump was born in 1948, the youngest of New York City real estate
developer Fred Trump's five children.
The
president, more than two years older than Robert, admittedly bullied his
brother in their younger years, even as he praised his loyalty and laid-back
demeanor.
“I
think it must be hard to have me for a brother but he’s never said anything
about it and we’re very close," Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller
“The Art of the Deal.”
“Robert
gets along with almost everyone," he added, "which is great for me
since I sometimes have to be the bad guy.”
In
the 1980s, Donald Trump tapped Robert Trump to oversee an Atlantic City casino
project, calling him the perfect fit for the job. When it cannibalized his
other casinos, though, “he pointed the finger of blame at Robert,” said Blair,
author of "The Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire."
“When
the slot machines jammed the opening weekend at the Taj Mahal, he very
specifically and furiously denounced Robert, and Robert walked out and never
worked for his brother again,” Blair said.
A
Boston University graduate, Robert Trump later managed the Brooklyn portion of
father Fred Trump's real estate empire, which was eventually sold.
Once
a regular boldface name in Manhattan’s social pages, Robert Trump had kept a
lower profile in recent years. “He was not a newsmaker,” Blair said.
Before
divorcing his first wife, Blaine Trump, more than a decade ago, Robert Trump
had been active on Manhattan’s Upper East Side charity circuit.
He
avoided the limelight during his elder brother's presidency, having retired to
the Hudson Valley. But he described himself as a big supporter of the White
House run in a 2016 interview with the New York Post.
“I
support Donald one thousand percent,” Robert Trump said.
In
early March of 2020, he married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan.
The
eldest Trump sibling and Mary's father, Fred Trump Jr., struggled with
alcoholism and died in 1981 at the age of 43. The president's surviving
siblings include Elizabeth Trump Grau and Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired
federal appeals judge.
Authors
Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher described Robert Trump as soft spoken but
cerebral in “Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President”:
“He lacked Donald’s charismatic showmanship, and he was happy to leave the
bravado to his brother, but he could show flashes of Trump temper."
See more: motorcycle tours of vietnam
0 Comments