President Trump said it was “very hard” to lose his younger brother, Robert, who died over the weekend.
“It was not a great weekend. It’s very hard. You knew it was going to happen, but still, when it happens, it’s a very tough thing. He was a great guy. He was a tremendous guy. He was my friend. I guess they say best friend and that’s true, and, you know, losing him, not easy,” Trump told Fox & Friends during a Monday morning interview.
The president traveled to Manhattan on Friday and visited his younger brother at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Robert Trump died at the age of 71 on Saturday night. The White House did not provide a cause.
“He was a very smart guy, but he wasn’t, you know, he would be there, and he’d be behind me and if I had the No. 1 show, if I had a big success. And no matter what I did, whether it was real estate deals or anything else, he was right there and, in many cases, helped me very much with whatever I did. And then when I became president, he was, I think, one of the most loyal people, there was no jealousy. You know a lot of times in families, I hate to say it, but there’s jealousy. And especially among children and among children that are competitive children, because he was very competitive. There was not an ounce of jealousy. He’d go around talking about how great this is for the country, and it’s so incredible, and he was my biggest fan,” Trump said Monday.
The president claimed other people would say that they spoke with Robert Trump and he would boast about his brother’s accomplishments in the White House.
“People would tell me all the time, ‘I spoke to your brother, and your brother was so thrilled and so thrilled at what was happening,’” he said. “And what was happening for the country. He was so angry with China because of what happened where the plague came in, and they shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. They could have stopped it. He was so upset by that. … A lot of people have already forgotten, and you can’t forget, but he was a fantastic guy.”
