US President Donald Trump said his younger brother Robert Trump died today, 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, who at 71 was younger than the 74-year-old president, 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 Centre before going to his golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, for the weekend.
The president was expected to attend the funeral, an aide said. He has a busy travel schedule in coming days with plans to visit four battleground states as part of his re-election campaign.
The cause of death was not revealed. Trump told reporters his brother was “having a hard time” with an undisclosed illness.
ABC News had reported that Robert was hospitalised in the intensive care unit at Mount Sinai hospital in New York for more than a week in June.
That same month, Robert 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.
A state supreme court judge in Poughkeepsie, New York, later denied a request to stop publication and cancelled the temporary restraining order.
Robert had said the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” would violate a confidentiality agreement tied to the estate of his father Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999. – Aug 16, 2020, Reuters
