WHAT’S THE STORY?
ROBERT Stewart Trump, the younger brother of President Donald Trump, died at the weekend, just 11 days before his 72nd birthday. He was apparently injured in a fall some months ago and died after suffering brain bleeds.
He had been in the intensive care unit of Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital after his accident in June, and appears to have recovered only briefly before being treated at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Centre, where his brother visited him on Friday, the day before he died. The exact cause of death has not been stated.
President Trump, 74, announced the news of the death of his younger brother on Saturday: “It is with [a] heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight.
“He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. His memory will live on in my heart forever.”
As evidence of the deep divisions Trump has caused in American society an appalling Twitter row soon began, sparked by #wrongTrump.
Most decent politicians and people, including his Presidential election opponent Senator Joe Biden, sent their condolences to the President and his family.
Trump has now lost both his younger and elder brother, Fred Trump Jnr having died at the age of 43 in 1981.
WHO WAS ROBERT?
THE youngest of the five children of Frederick Trump and his Scottish wife Mary Anne née MacLeod from the Isle of Lewis, Robert Trump was born on August 26, 1948.
His middle name was a nod to his Scottish ancestry, and with two elder brothers he could not have expected to play a senior role in the family real estate and property development company. But, due to the tragic early death of his elder brother Fred Jnr, Robert came to play an important role in his father’s business.
Unlike Donald, Robert was neither flamboyant or ostentatious. However, he was a fixture on the New York social circuit with his first wife Blaine, who he married in 1980, until their highly publicised divorce after 26 years of marriage. They had no children themselves but Trump adopted his wife’s son Christopher.
Before and after the divorce was finalised in 2008, he very much preferred to stay in the background in the various Trump businesses and seems to have been something of the opposite to his brother, who himself acknowledged that Robert was the good guy.
In his The Art of the Deal, Donald wrote that “Robert gets along with almost everyone, which is great for me since I sometimes have to be the bad guy”.
In recent years, Robert described himself as “gainfully retired”. He remarried, to his secretary Ann Marie Pallan, in March this year after a long relationship.
Despite rumours over the years of occasional bad blood between himself and his elder brother, he supported his brother’s campaign for the presidency “1000 per cent” and, like his two sisters, never commented in public on what Donald was doing at the White House.
WHAT ABOUT HIS NIECE’S BOOK?
IT is somewhat sad that Robert Trump only came to prominence for the first time when he went to court to try and stop the publication of How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, a searing memoir by Mary Trump, his niece and the daughter of Fred Jnr.
His final court bid came after he suffered his injury in June and was unsuccessful.
The court allowed Mary Trump to publish details of how her uncles, Robert and Donald, tried to prevent her receiving her full inheritance from her grandfather.
She also used the book and role as a trained psychologist to present an analysis of her family and its most famous member.
IS THERE A CURSE ON WHITE HOUSE FAMILIES?
NOT in the sense of the Kennedy clan, though goodness knows what will happen with the President’s children Donald Jr, Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany and Barron.
The older generation of the Trump family have largely kept out of the limelight that has surrounded their brother since he first came to fame as a high-profile brash businessman, and then a media celebrity as host of the American version of The Apprentice.
In hindsight his move into politics was always likely but not perhaps as a Republican – his initial forays were inclined to the Democrats.
President Trump’s remaining siblings are Maryanne Trump Barry, 83, a retired federal judge, and Elizabeth Trump Grau, 78, a retired bank executive.
Maryanne became an attorney and rose to be a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, appointed to that role by President Bill Clinton.
Of all the Trump siblings she is the one who has kept her links with the Isle of Lewis, her mother’s birthplace.
She is well liked there, and five years ago donated £160,000 to a care home in Stornoway.
Elizabeth also prefers to stay out of the limelight. She has been married since 1989 to James Walter Grau, a film producer. Elizabeth has retired and lives in Florida.
Fred Trump Jnr was supposed to be the successor to the patriarch of the family, but his heart just was not in the cut-throat business of real estate.
Instead, his ambitions lay high in the sky as a pilot.
He also took to drink and President Trump has often called him an alcoholic – Donald famously does not touch alcohol after seeing what it did to his brother.
It was Donald whose relentless ambition catapulted him to the head of the business, and Robert became an executive answering to him.
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