President Donald Trump’s younger brother has died at age 71, according to multiple news reports.
Robert Trump, who was hospitalized in New York, died Saturday, according to reporter Steve Herman.
“He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,” the president said in a statement that was released late Saturday.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the president was in his prayers after the death of Trump’s brother.
Robert Trump took blood thinners and had “experienced brain bleeds” after a recent fall, The New York Times reported late Saturday.
The president plans to attend his brother’s funeral, according to reporter Jennifer Jacobs.
The president made a last-minute change of plans to see his brother Friday after learning he was seriously ill, according to reporter Vivian Salama.
NBC News first reported Robert Trump was seriously ill. White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere confirmed the news to CNN.
Trump delivered remarks to the City of New York Police Benevolent Association later Friday, according to ABC.
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 2 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.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
