Stanley Chera and Ron Prosor Image by Karen Leon

By Aiden Pink August 3, 2020

President Trump is scheduled to attend a fundraiser in New Jersey next week hosted by the family of Stanley Chera, a friend of his who died earlier this year from COVID-19, Hamodia reported.

Chera, a real estate developer and a prominent leader of the Syrian Jewish community of New York and New Jersey, died in April at age 78. Trump had said in a press conference in March that Chera’s diagnosis had caused him to understand the seriousness of the coronavirus.

“When you send a friend to the hospital, and you call up to find out how is he doing — it happened to me, where he goes to the hospital, he says goodbye,” Trump said. “He’s sort of a tough guy. A little older, a little heavier than he’d like to be, frankly. And you call up the next day: ‘How’s he doing?’ And he’s in a coma? This is not the flu.”

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Chera was an early backer of Trump and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his election bid in 2016.

The fundraiser is to be held on Sunday in Deal, N.J., which has a large Syrian Jewish community. As with most such events, more donations leads to greater access: A single ticket to the event costs $5,600, but $250,000 allows guests to have two tickets to the event plus access to a private roundtable discussion and a photo op with Trump.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

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