Donald Trumpโs younger brother, Robert Trump, died on Saturday night aged 71 after being hospitalised in New York, the president said in a statement.
The president on Friday visited his brother in hospital after White House officials said Robert had become seriously ill.ย Officials did not immediately release a cause of death.
โIt is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,โ Donald Trump said in a statement. โHe 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.โ
Robert Trump spent much of his career with the family real-estate firm, becoming a top executive. Unlike his brother, however, he was said not to court publicity and lived semi-retired in New York state.
In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump wrote that “Robert gets along with almost everyone, which is great for me since I sometimes have to be the bad guy”.
In a 2016 interview with the New York Post ahead of the presidential election, the younger brother said “I support Donald one thousand percent”.
He recently went to court in a failed bid to stop publication of his niece Mary Trump’s tell-all book about the president, How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
He divorced his first wife Blaine over a decade ago and married Ann Marie Pallan in March this year.
