Robert Trump, President's Younger Brother, Dies At 72

NEW YORK, NY — Robert Trump, President Donald Trump's younger brother, died Saturday night, according to multiple reports citing a statement from the president.

Robert Trump was 72.

The death was announced by the White House. He had been hospitalized for several days after becoming seriously ill.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” President Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

Robert Stewart Trump long stood in the shadow of the brother that would become president. He kept a low profile even as Donald Trump was splashed across the front of New York's tabloids and eventually ascended in politics.

Born in New York on Aug. 26, 1948, Robert Trump was the youngest of the five children of Fred Trump Sr. and his wife, the former Mary Anne MacLeod. The eldest son, Fred Jr., died of an alcoholism-related illness in 1981 at 42.

Mary Trump, Fred Jr.'s daughter, caused a family and legal rift this year by publishing a memoir of her time in the family.

“I have a wonderful brother,” the president had said on Friday during a news conference at the White House before visiting him. “We’ve had a great relationship for a long time, from Day 1, a long time ago.”

The New York Times reports the two were estranged for years, before Donald Trump’s run for the White House.

Robert Trump had no children. The Times reports he helped raise Christopher Hollister Trump-Retchin, the son of his first wife, Blaine Trump. In addition to the president, he is survived by his second wife, Ann Marie Pallan, and his sisters, Maryanne Trump Barry and Elizabeth Trump Grau.