President Donald Trump offered his condolences after Dolly Parton’s death was announced Tuesday, saying “there has never been anyone like her.”
“Very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER, has just passed away,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her, and never will.”
He also wrote that, for one week, he will order U.S. flags to be lowered in honor of the country music icon, starting Tuesday night.
On Tuesday, Bryan Seaver, Parton’s nephew and former head of security, announced Parton’s death in a video posted on her Instagram.
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“It is an honor, an honor that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness, but sadness lies with us, not with Dolly,” Seaver said.
The singer had been dealing with some health issues recently, forcing her to cancel some performances, but she told People just last week that there were “so many things” she wanted to achieve.
Parton was fairly apolitical during her career, saying in 2019 that she doesn’t “do politics.”
Still, she was an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ community and same-sex marriage. In 1995, she launched the Imagination Library, which mails free books to children up to age 5 to help with literacy. In 2020, it was revealed that Parton donated $1 million to the scientists working on the Moderna COVID vaccine.
In 2021, she told the “Today Show” that she turned down the Trump administration’s offer to present her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying she couldn’t attend the ceremony once because her husband was sick and couldn’t attend another time because it was at the height of the COVID pandemic.
“But I don’t work for those awards,” she continued. “It’d be nice, but I’m not sure that I even deserve it. But it’s a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it.”