WASHINGTON – Sometimes politics give way to the personal in the White House. It has seen 18 marriages and at least 10 people are known to have died there, including two presidents and three first ladies.
It will serve Friday as a place of mourning for President Donald Trump and his family, with a private memorial service for the president’s younger brother, Robert, who died last week at 71. The president described Robert as “not alone my brother. He was my best friend. “
Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge both mourned the loss of a son while serving as president, Willie Lincoln in 1862 and Calvin Coolidge Jr. in 1924. The memorial stones for both children began in the White House.
Unlike Willie Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge Jr., Robert Trump did not live in the White House. Yet it is entirely in the president’s ability to honor him with a service there, said Anita McBride, who has served in three presidencies, including as Chief of Staff Laura Bush.
“The White House is a very complex place. It’s an office, it’s a museum and it’s a house, ”McBride said. “We lend it to the president for the time he or she lives there. From that perspective, we need to have an understanding of some of the decisions they make in a case like this. “
When Trump explained why he wanted a service for his brother at the White House, he said, ‘I think he would be honored a lot. He loves our country. He loves our country so much. He was so proud of what we did and what we do for our country. So I think it would be appropriate. “
Robert Trump, a businessman, died Saturday after being hospitalized in New York. The president had visited his brother in the hospital on Friday.
Robert Trump began his career on Wall Street working in corporate finance, but later joined the family business, managing real estate as a top executive in the Trump Organization.
“When he worked in the Trump Organization, he was known as the Fun Trump,” Gwenda Blair, a biographer of the Trump family, told The Associated Press. “Robert was the one who people would try to intervene if there was a problem.”
In the 1980s, Donald Trump hired Robert Trump to oversee an Atlantic City casino project, calling him the perfect fit for the job. When that project cannibalized his other casinos, “however, he pointed the finger of blame at Robert,” said Blair, author of “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.”
A Boston University student later managed the Brooklyn portion of his father Fred Trump’s real estate, which was eventually sold.
Within a week of the memorial service, Trump will use the White House for another unusual purpose – his speech for acceptance of nomination. He had hoped to deliver the speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as Jacksonville, Florida, but had to cancel due to the coronavirus pandemic. He settled on the White House and large numbers of piers on the South Wall indicated that it would not be a simple affair.
“That will not go down well with everyone, but in this case, the president will be damned if he does, damn if he does not,” said McBride, director of the First Ladies initiative of Legacies of America at the American University. .
“It’s hard, I think, for him to have one winning scenario,” she said of his choice.
