Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus who gave millions to Trump dead at 95

Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, who has donated millions to Donald Trump, has died. 

The billionaire died at the age of 95, according to an internal memo, obtained by CNN. 

Marcus died in his home in Boca Raton, Florida, on November 4,Jobs Creators Network, his nonprofit group, confirmed to DailyMail.com. 

He died of natural causes. 

'The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the death of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,' a spokesperson told the New York Post. 

'He was a master merchant and a retail visionary. But even more importantly, he valued our associates, customers and communities above all.' 

Marcus, who had a net worth of $7.4 billion, started The Home Depot in 1978 with Arthur Blank. The hardware store would go on to have a value of $400 billion and more than 2,300 stores, CNN reported. 

In 2019, Marcus revealed that between 80 and 90 percent of his fortune would go to the Marcus Foundation - which looks to build community food resources. 

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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp released a statement on Tuesday, writing on X: 'Georgia was blessed to know such a man of vision and generosity, and we will keep Belli, the entire Marcus family, and The Home Depot team in our thoughts and prayers as we honor his life and memory.' 

The hardware store founder was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1929 to Russian Jewish immigrants, and he was the youngest of four siblings. 

They lived in a tenement and struggled financially, but Marcus enjoyed it. 

'I grew up in a tenement, and to me, that was a palace. That’s just where I grew up. My parents were Russian immigrants. Spoke Yiddish in the house, didn’t speak English,' he said, according to WSB-TV. 

'It was great. I had lots of kids to play with. In the tenement, all we had was kids. All kids like myself, all of us poor, we’re all the same, in the same boat.'  

In recent years, Marcus was well-known as being a megadonor to Republican efforts, including Former President Donald Trump. 

The retail heavyweight told the New York Post last year that Joe Biden was a 'dunce' and 'the most divisive president we've ever seen,' while blaming him for many of America's problems.

He also backed claims 81-year-old Biden - the oldest president in US history - was mentally-unfit for top office and even claimed he may be a 'puppet' mouthpiece for others within the Democrat party. 

'Somebody is feeding him like a puppet,' the businessman told the Post before the president dropped out of the race, adding that if Biden were elected again, America would become 'a Third World country.'  

FEC data shows the 95-year-old billionaire has poured $64 million into Republican campaigns over the years, including Trump's 2016 White House bid - but he admitted he's was 'struggling' to get behind many of his former political favorites.

He often made appearances on right-wing shows, such as Fox News, and actively showed his support for the 45th president. 

Marcus has also donated millions to the campaigns of John McCain and Ron DeSantis, according to CNN. 

In 2022, he criticized Americans for being too socialist and said 'nobody works' and that 'nobody gives a damn.' 

'Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid,' he mocked. 'The woke people have taken over the world.'

'We used to have free speech here. We don’t have it,' he said at the time.  

The Rutgers University graduate met his cofounder while working at Handy Dan Home Improvement in California. 

Home Depot would come about after they were both fired from the Golden State store, and they devised a plan to create a bigger hardware store, according to CNN. 

They started their company in Atlanta, Georgia, where Marcus and his wife Billi were well-known philanthropists.  

He was the CEO of the company until 1997 and was a chairman until 2002. He retired afterward. 

The GOP donor said last year that he wasn't sure he'd be able to launch Home Depot in the current socio-economic climate due to 'regulations and all this woke crap.' 

Marcus had previously attacked the modern generation of business leaders for prioritizing 'woke issues' at the expense of shareholders.

He and his wife also started the Marcus Autism Center at Emory University and donated to several Jewish and medical organizations over the years, including a $250million grant to help open the Georgia Aquarium in 2005, according to CNN. 

'Whenever I go somewhere, I like to stop in and see an aquarium. And when I go into an aquarium and I look at the children, and I see their wide eyes just looking incredulously at some of these creatures floating around, what else brings joy,' Marcus previously said, according to WSB-TV.