President Trump's good friend Stanley Chera died of COVID-19 on Saturday, April 11th. The Real Deal reported:
Stanley I. Chera, who parlayed his father’s Brooklyn department store business into one of New York real estate’s biggest retail empires, reaped huge rewards from the city’s emergence as a global shopping destination and used his wealth and connections to play kingmaker for Donald Trump, has died from complications of the coronavirus, making him the most high-profile industry casualty of the global pandemic.
As the pandemic spread rapidly in New York, Trump had advised Chera to leave the city and decamp to his summer home near Deal, N.J., a popular vacation-home destination for many moguls hailing from Chera’s Syrian Jewish community, which dominates New York retail. Chera took his advice but fell ill anyway, and was admitted to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in late March.As founder of Crown Acquistions Chera partnered with The Carlyle Group and Kushner Companies in 2008.
Crown partnered with the Carlyle Group and Kushner Companies in a $525 million deal to acquire and reposition the retail at 666 Fifth Avenue.Carlyle exited in 2012 with at least a double. Kushner Companies leased the property for 99 years to Brookfield Property Partners, which is backed by a Qatari sovereign wealth fund. This deal bailed out Jared Kushner and his family.
Chera;s death came after President Trump's advice failed to prevent his friend from getting the coronavirus.
Sunday, April 12th CNN interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci:
Asked if he thought lives could have been saved “if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started [in the] third week of February, instead of mid-March”, Fauci said:
“What goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
After this statement President Trump ominously retweeted a message ending“Time to #FireFauci.”
President Trump did not kill his good friend, Stanley Chera. A virus did, one that does not see wealth, power or political connections. It rides on the breath of people, 25% of whom do not appear sick.
Nero fiddled, Bush strummed and Trump hunched.
Update 4-29-22: Insider reported "The severity of COVID-19 first struck President Donald Trump after an older, wealthy New York real-estate-developer friend got sick and was fighting for his life in the president's hometown hospital"
