In a new interview with The Washington Post, the president spoke candidly about his brother's passing, which the family has said was due to alcoholism.
President Trump is expressing regret over his relationship with his late brother.
Fred Trump Jr. died when he was just 42 after suffering a heart attack due to alcoholism. In a new interview with The Washington Post, the president spoke candidly about his brother's passing, confiding that he feels haunted by Fred Jr.'s death and the events leading up to it.
“I do regret having put pressure on him,” Trump told Post reporter Michael Kranish of trying to convince Fred Jr. to take a more active role in the family business. "It was just not his thing. ... I think the mistake that we made was we assumed that everybody would like it. That would be the biggest mistake."
Fred Jr., Trump said, only ever wanted to be an airline pilot, a job he did for just a short time.
But the brothers' father, Fred Trump Sr., dismissed the job as little more than "a chauffeur in the sky," the Post reported.
The interview is remarkable, Kranish told Inside Edition, because it's one of the few times the president has ever admitted a mistake publicly.
"It's very rare for the president ... to express regrets, so the fact that he did so in this case I thought was very notable," Kranish said. "He certainly did do that."
But Fred Jr.'s death has taught Trump lessons in how he plans to deal with the opioid crisis and other addictions.
"Donald Trump says today he has learned lessons from that and wants to apply those lessons to fighting alcohol and opioid abuse," said Kranish.
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