US President Donald Trump said that his younger brother, Robert Trump, died on Saturday night, a day after the president visited him in a New York hospital.
“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. 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,” Trump said in a statement.
Robert Trump, who was at 71, was a business executive and real estate developer.
President Trump made an emotional visit to see his ailing brother on Friday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center before going to his golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, for the weekend.
The president was expected to attend the funeral, an aide said.
The cause of death was not revealed. Trump told reporters on Friday that his brother was “having a hard time” with an undisclosed illness.
ABC News had reported that Robert Trump was hospitalized in the intensive care unit at Mount Sinai hospital in New York for more than a week in June.
That same month, Robert Trump won a temporary restraining order against his and the president’s niece, Mary Trump, to stop her from publishing a tell-all book that offered an unflattering look of the US president and his family.
US President Donald Trump wears a mask as he tours a lab where they are making components for a potential vaccine at the Bioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, North Carolina on Monday. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, infection cases in the US surpassed 4.29 million and the death toll reached 148,295 as of press time on Tuesday. Photo: AFP
