United States president Donald Trump’s brother Robert has died at the age of 71. President Trump said his brother had been hospitalized in New York on Friday but died a day later. The U.S. President visited New York City hospital on Friday evening after the White House said that Robert Trump was seriously ill and admitted there. The younger Trump was close to the U.S. president and as recently as June 2020 filed a law suit on behalf of Donald Trump that unsuccessfully sought to stop the publication of the tell-all book by the president’s niece, Mary.
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. His job title there was that of an executive vice president. He helped oversee the company’s casinos.
“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.” Perhaps people were drawn to him due to his laid back demeanor and considered him some how more approachable than his older brother.
Robert Stewart Trump was born in 1948, the youngest of New York City real estate developer Fred Trump’s five children. The oldest is Maryanne Trump Barry, who is a federal judge, followed by Frederick (Teddy) Trump Junior, who died in 1981 at the age of 43, Donald Trump is in the middle, and then followed by Elizabeth Trump Gau, a retired bank executive and then lastly Robert.
The president, two years older than Robert, admittedly bullied his brother in their younger years, even as he praised his loyalty and laid-back demeanour. There are reports of Donald Trump also bullying is elder brother Teddy. Sources close to the Trump family said the U.S. president often scolded Teddy including telling him to grow up and make something out of himself in the family business. Also, Annamaria Schifano, the then Teddy’s boyfriend intimated that Donald Trump was fond of picking up fights with Teddy all the time. “There were a lot of combustion in the family when Donald was around”, Schifano intimated.
“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.” There has been reports that Robert Trump was the coolest guy in the Trump family and people depended on him to calm his siblings whenever there was a problem. So different was his calm demeanor that people wondered how they coexisted with his hot tempered older brother, Donald.
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. In 2019, one of the companies Robert Trump was running was awarded a $33 million contract by the U.S. Marshals Service. The other bidders that were interested in the tender launched protests including filing a formal complaint about alleged favoritism and nepotism in the bidding process.
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. He prefers a quieter life with his newly-wed wife away from the popping eyes of the media.
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 was engaged in and provided donations to several philanthropic projects including serving as a trustee of the Angels of Light and a horse rescue group.
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 per cent,” Robert Trump told Page Six. The younger Trump also supported Donald’s supporters including Republican politician Andrew Heaney who launched his congressional primary campaign in the 2016 New York 16th District but failed miserably. Robert Trump lived in this region of the city.
In early March of 2020, he married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan. Ms Pallan was Robert Trump’s former secretary in the Trump Organization. The president of the United States did not attend their wedding though, as the younger Trump is not fond of publicity. He quietly separated and then divorced his wife of 23 years in 2008.
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.
President Trump has faced harsh criticism about his mishandling of the coronavirus in the country as the United States is the worst affected country in the world. As of today, Covid-19 has infected more than 21 million people worldwide of which more than 700,000 have died. The United States’ death toll from the pandemic currently stands at a little bit over 172,000 people, with a daily average death of at least 1,000 people.
