US1 min(s) read
Published 08:49 16 Aug 2020 GMT
Donald Trump's younger brother Robert, 71, has passed away following an undisclosed illness, the president has revealed in a statement.
"It is with [a] heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight," he said on Saturday per the BBC.
This comes after various news outlets suggested that the 71-year-old was seriously ill prior to his death at a New York hospital.
"He was not just my brother, he was my best friend," Donald Trump said. "His memory will live on in my heart forever."
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Eric Trump also paid tribute to his late uncle, who chose to live his life out of the spotlight, on Twitter.
He wrote: "Robert Trump was an incredible man - strong, kind and loyal to the core. Anyone who encountered him felt his warmth immediately. He will be deeply missed by our entire family."
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Donald Trump described his younger brother as "much quieter and easygoing than I am" and "the only guy in my life whom I ever call 'honey'," the Guardian reports.
Robert was born two years after his brother Donald, and he was the youngest of Fred and Mary Anne Trump's five children.
The eldest of Donald Trump's siblings, Fred Jr, passed away in 1981.
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Robert was a top executive in his family's real estate business, having begun his career on Wall Street, and prior to his death, he had been living semi-retired in New York state.
He had recently attempted to stop the publication of How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man - a tell-all book about the president penned by his niece Mary Trump.
However, Robert's court case failed.
The New York Post reports that Robert had spent the last week of his life in Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital intensive care unit after falling sick with an undisclosed illness in June.
