A real estate developer and close friend of President Trump, who the president had said was in a coma, died on Saturday after a monthlong fight against the coronavirus.
Stanley Chera led Crown Acquisitions, a real estate firm that he founded and ran.
Trump first spoke of a friend who had fallen ill with the coronavirus at a March 29 White House briefing, where he noted the “viciousness” of the disease.
“I had a friend who went to a hospital the other day. He’s a little older, and he’s heavy, but he’s [a] tough person,” Trump said. “And he went to the hospital, and a day later, he’s in a coma. … He’s not doing well.”
“The speed and the viciousness, especially if it gets the right person, it’s horrible. It’s really horrible,” he said.
Asked whether Chera’s illness had marked a turning point in his thinking on the pandemic, Trump said it had not because of the statistics and case numbers he had seen.
“He’s sort of central casting for what we’re talking about, and it hit him very hard,” Trump said of Chera on April 1. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
As of Monday morning, more than 550,000 U.S. cases had been confirmed, and the virus had killed more than 22,100 people, according to Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 7,000 deaths have occurred in New York City.
At a 2019 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump touted Chera as “one of the biggest builders and real estate people in the world.”
“A friend of mine — he’s very shy, but he’s very rich. He shouldn’t be shy. He’s one of the biggest builders and real estate people in the world, one of the biggest owners of property,” Trump said.
“He’s a great guy, and he’s been with me from the beginning — Stanley Chera. Stanley! Those big beautiful buildings in Manhattan, you know, those big beautiful buildings? He owns them. Stanley, how much did you make this month? Stanley is a great guy. He’s been with us all. He loves you, and he’s been with us from the beginning.”
Chera, a Republican, was also a donor to the Trump Victory Fund.
