Donald Trump

Donald John Trump was the forty-fifth president of the United States and is an American businessman and real estate developer who has owned, managed, or licensed his name to hotels, casinos, golf courses, and residential properties. He is a television personality and producer and an author of several books.

Donald Trump during his presidency.

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York as the fourth child of New York real estate tycoon Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He has three older siblings and one younger brother. Donald's older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, served as a U.S. district court judge from 1983 to 1999. His elder brother, Frederick, Jr. (Freddy), made a lasting impression on Donald. Freddy worked briefly for their father's business before becoming an airline pilot in the 1960s and struggled with alcoholism, which led to his early death in 1989 at age forty-three. Donald Trump has stated that seeing his brother struggle with alcohol kept him away from alcohol and cigarettes.

His other siblings included Elizabeth Trump Grau, who retired as a banker and is married to film producer James Grau, and Robert Trump, who spent much of his career working for the family company before dying in 2020 at age seventy-one.

At age thirteen, Donald Trump was sent to the New York Military Academy, which he attended from 1959 to 1964; this was partly due to his displayed behavioral difficulties that led his father to comment on Donald being a rough child. Following his time at the New York Military Academy, Donald attended Fordham University in the Bronx from 1964 to 1966 before he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, which he attended from 1966 to 1968. In 1968, during the Vietnam War, he secured a diagnosis of bone spurs, which disqualified him from the military draft after he previously secured four draft deferments for education.

Ivana and Donald Trump pictured together.

In 1977, Donald Trump married his first wife, Ivana Trump, (née Zelnickova Winklmayr), a New York fashion model who had been an alternate on the 1972 Czech Olympic Ski Team. She played a major role in supervising the renovation of the Commodore and the Plaza Hotel and was named a vice president in charge of design in the Trump Organization. Together, they had three children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. The couple went through a highly publicized divorce that was finalized in 1992.

Donald Trump and Marla Maples.

By 1993, Trump married his second wife, actress Marla Maples, with whom he already had a daughter, Tiffany. Trump's second marriage ended when he filed for divorce in 1997, again a highly publicized divorce, which would be finalized in June 1999.

Trump married again in January 2005 to former Slovenian model Melania Trump (née Knauss) in a public and lavish wedding. Melania, more than twenty-three years his junior, and Trump have one child together, Barron Trump.

Upon his graduation, Donald Trump began his career in real estate. He started working full-time for his father's business, where he was expected to work in various roles and helped manage its holdings of rental housing, which was estimated to be between 10,000 and 22,000 units. In 1974, he was named the president of a conglomeration of Trump-owned corporations and partnerships. He would later name this conglomeration the Trump Organization.

Donald and Father Fred Trump.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Donald Trump expanded the business by investing in luxury hotels and residential properties, shifting the business's development focus to Manhattan and later to Atlantic City, New Jersey. One of these expansions included the purchase of the decrepit Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Station. Trump used his father's political connections in the city, as well as a partnership with the Hyatt Corporation to refurbish the building and part of Grand Central Station. The deal included a complex profit-sharing agreement with the city of New York that included a forty-year property tax abatement, the first such tax break granted to a commercial property in New York City. The building reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel and offered 1,400 rooms.

Trump Tower, opened in 1983, is one of Donald Trump development jewels.

In 1983, Donald Trump opened Trump Tower, an office, retail, and residential complex constructed in partnership with the Equitable Life Assurance Company. The 58-story building on 56th Street and Fifth Avenue would eventually become Trump's Manhattan residence and the headquarters of the Trump Organization. Other Manhattan properties developed by Trump during the 1980s included the Trump Plaza residential cooperative in 1984, the Trump Parc luxury condominium complex in 1986, and the nineteen-story Plaza Hotel, which was a historic landmark for which Trump paid a reported $400 million.

Trump opening the Trump Taj Mahal which would go bankrupt in a decade.

The 1980s also saw the Trump Organization's foray into the casino business, specifically in Atlantic City, where his properties included Harrah's at Trump Plaza, developed in 1984, and later renamed to Trump Plaza; Trump's Castle Casino Resort in 1985; and the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, which was then the largest casino in the world. This period also saw Trump purchase the New Jersey Generals, a team participating in the short-lived U.S. Football League; Mar-a-Lago, a 118-room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, which had been built in the 1920s by heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post; and a 282-foot yacht named the Trump Princess, which at the time was the world's second-largest yacht. He also purchased an East Coast air-shuttle service, which he named Trump Shuttle.

In the 1990s, during a U.S. economic recession, many of Trump's businesses suffered, with payments on his approximate $5 billion debt, $900 million of which he personally guaranteed. This led to restructuring agreements that saw Trump surrender his airline in 1992, sell the Trump Princess, and a reduction of his ownership stake in many, if not most, of his properties, on which he had taken out second and third mortgages. Despite some of these measures, the Trump Taj Mahal declared bankruptcy in 1991, and two other Trump-owned casinos as well as his Plaza Hotel in New York City went bankrupt in 1992.

Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.

The late 1990s saw a strong economy that would, in turn, see Trump further projects with the help of Deutsche Bank AG, which wanted to establish a presence in the U.S. commercial real estate market. The bank extended money to Trump in the late 1990s and 2000s for projects, including Trump World Tower in 2001 in New York and Trump International Hotel and Tower in 2009 in Chicago. Around this time, Trump developed a plan to convert Mar-a-Lago into a luxury housing development, but he experienced opposition to the plan, and instead, he converted the property into a private club, which opened in 1995.

Despite some of his real estate successes in this period, Trump's real estate business continued to struggle, with his company Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filing for bankruptcy in 2004 after several properties had accumulated unmanageable debt. The company, which was renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts, filed for bankruptcy again in 2009.

A collection of items branded with Trump's name.

Beginning in the early 2000s, and despite some of the bankruptcies and failures Trump had experienced during this period, Trump was able to turn his name into a synonym for success. This led him to market his name as a brand for success and luxury, which would be sold to residential buildings, hotels, resorts, and golf courses. Trump extended the branding of his name to various products, including suits, ties, cufflinks, steaks, and bottled water; often these products are offered at his hotels, resorts, and golf courses, where the Trump branding can be replete. The branding of his name took a hit during his 2016 presidential campaign, as his comments and actions were heavily criticized.

Trump-branded ties.

This extended as well to Trump Financial, a mortgage company; the Trump Foundation, a charity organization; and the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, which was formerly known as the Trump University, an was an online education company focused on real estate investment and entrepreneurialism. The latter venture was targeted by a class-action lawsuit, which alleged fraud on behalf of former students. It ceased operation in 2011, and Trump settled the lawsuits for $25 million in November of 2016. In 2019, Trump agreed to pay $2 million in damages and admit guilt to settle another lawsuit that alleged Trump illegally used assets from the Trump Foundation to fund his 2016 presidential campaign. The Trump Foundation was dissolved as part of the settlement.

Trump surrounded by Miss Universe contestants.

In 1996, Trump partnered with NBC television network to purchase the Miss Universe Organization, which produced the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants. During the period of time of the Trump and NBC partnership, the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants received top ratings, and the Miss Universe pageant was broadcast in 180 countries. In 2015, Trump bought out NBC's portion of the Miss Universe Organization, and three days later, he sold it to talent agency WME-IMG.

Cover image of Trump's reality show The Apprentice.

In 2004, Trump partnered with NBC again and Mark Burnett Productions to produce and star in the reality television show The Apprentice. The show quickly became popular and would see several Emmy nominations but never a win. The show launched a spin-off, The Celebrity Apprentice, before Trump left as the host to pursue his political career in 2015. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger became the new host of The Celebrity Apprentice, before the show was canceled in 2017. The original The Apprentice show had not, in 2023, been canceled, but it had not aired since 2017. Rupert Murdoch attempted to buy the rights to The Apprentice, but it eventually fell apart in fears that Trump would use the show as a platform for political campaigning.

Donald Trump's best known and first book.

Trump has been credited as the author or co-author (often working with ghostwriters) of several books. The first such book was Trump: The Art of the Deal was first published in 1987, which was part memoir and part business-advice book. The book spent thirteen weeks as number 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and it stayed on the list for forty-eight weeks and sold over 1 million copies by 2015.

Following his ban from social media platforms Facebook and Twitter in 2021, Donald Trump floated the idea of building a new social media platform owned by himself. The platform was created and launched in February 2022 by Trump Media & Technology Group, a group founded in October 2021. The application was launched on iOS and was approved for Android in October 2022.

The platform bills itself as "free from political discrimination," but it launched with a somewhat broken registration process, long waitlists, and several glitches for sign-up. Otherwise, TRUTH Social is a micro-blogging platform, similar to Twitter, that allows users to build profiles, follow others, and create posts; on the platform, posts are called "Truths" and "Re-Truths." TRUTH Social joins a growing field of so-called alternative social media sites that prioritize freedom of speech over content moderation. Trump would not start posting on the platform until two months after its launch.

Trump during his 2000 Reform Party attempt.

Prior to the 2016 presidential race, starting in the 1980s, Donald Trump made glib comments and public musings about running for president. Often these were dismissed as publicity stunts. But in 1999, he switched his voter registration from Republican to Independent, and he joined the Reform Party while forming a presidential exploratory committee. Despite the efforts, he declined to run in 2000 but published his book The America We Deserve, in which he set out his political viewpoints, described as socially liberal and economically conservative. He returned to having a political profile in 2012, when his voter card was switched back to Republican, and he began to repeatedly publicly and falsely claim that President Barack Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen. Trump announced his intention to run for the 2016 presidential election in June of 2015, running in the Republican primary.

Trump pictured amongst the crowded field of GOP primary opponents in 2015.

Trump entered the 2016 presidential race and went on to defeat the sixteen Republican primary opponents. He developed his "Make America Great Again" slogan, which was advertised widely on red hats, which became one of the most hated and most successful examples of color branding in marketing history. He set out his policies during this period, which included promises to create millions of new jobs, punish companies exporting jobs overseas, repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), revive the U.S. coal industry, reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. (which he successfully marketed as "draining the swamp"), withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement, impose tariffs on countries that allegedly engaged in unfair trade practices, construct a wall along the U.S. Mexico border, and ban immigration from predominantly Muslim countries. Commentators described his political positions as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.

Trump pictured with running mate Mike Pence on the eve of the election results.

He won the election as the forty-fifth president of the United States in a surprise victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, although he lost the popular vote. The campaign by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump included various controversies, including Trump's lewd comments on women and female genitalia. These controversies led many pollsters and pundits to express confidence in a victory for Hillary Clinton. However, when voting began on November 8, 2016, Trump began with a series of critical wins in the "Rust Belt" states that would lead to a Trump win in the electoral college vote by 304 to 227. Trump's unprecedented win led to questions about the reliability of polls and the strategic mistakes of the Clinton campaign.

Trump on inauguration being sworn in as president.

He became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency and the first without prior military or government service. His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist.

During the presidential race and throughout Donald Trump's presidency, there were questions about his net worth. Further controversy occurred when he refused to release his tax returns during the election cycle—citing an audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)—and he would not release his tax returns during his presidency, becoming the first major party candidate to do so since Richard Nixon in 1972. When Democrats regained control of the House in the 2018 elections, Trump faced further calls to release his tax returns.

This came to a head in April 2019, when Congressman Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, requested six years of Trump's personal and business tax returns from the IRS. This request and a follow-up subpoena for documents were rejected by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The New York Assembly in May of 2019 passed legislation that authorized tax officials to release the president's state returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, which led to a subpoena for Trump's personal and corporate tax returns dating back to 2011. This was challenged in court, although Trump's challenge was dismissed, and the enforcement of the subpoena was delayed. The Supreme Court heard arguments over whether a president could block the disclosure of financial information to congressional committees. His tax returns would eventually be publicly released in December of 2022.

The first 100 days of Trump's presidency lasted from January 20, 2017, until April 29, 2017. Trump issued a series of back-to-back executive orders in the first few days to meet his campaign promises, along with some orders to roll back policies and regulations of the Obama administration. Some key policies that began in the first 100 days included his first Supreme Court nomination, steps toward building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a travel ban for citizens from several predominantly Muslim countries, and the first few steps to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Other orders included a federal hiring freeze, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific partnership, reinstating Mexico City policy banning federal funding of non-governmental organizations abroad that promote or perform abortions, scaling back financial regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act, and a lifetime foreign-lobbying ban for members of his administration and a five-year ban for all other lobbying. He released his proposed budget at this time, which outlined plans for increased spending for the military, veterans affairs, and national security; while making spending cuts to government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and reduced funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Community Development Block Grant program. Much of this funding was later restored as the cuts proved controversial.

During his presidency, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, citing security concerns; after legal challenges, the Supreme Court upheld the policy's third revision. He enacted a tax cut package for individuals and businesses, which also rescinded the individual health insurance mandate and allowed oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

In foreign policy, Trump pursued his America First agenda, withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; imposed import tariffs on various goods, triggering a trade war with China; and started negotiations with North Korea seeking denuclearization.

During his term in office, Donald Trump nominated 274 individuals to federal judgeships and made 245 judicial appointments. Of those appointments, 234 were Article III judges. Trump withdrew eight nominations during this time, while a further 143 received no vote from the senate. In the case of the Supreme Court, Trump made three nominations, and in some cases, these nominations have been one of the biggest long-term impacts of Trump's presidency. These nominations included Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.

Justice Neil Gorsuch.

In January of 2017, Donald Trump made his first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Neil Gorsuch was the appointment to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia. On April 3, 2017, voting began for Neil Gorsuch's nomination, and on the same day, Senate Democrats announced they could sustain a filibuster against the nomination of the judge. In anticipation of the filibuster, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell indicated he could restrict the use of filibusters for Supreme Court nominations, also referred to as the nuclear option. The Senate voted on April 6, 2017, to restrict the use of filibusters on presidential nominations and ended the debate on the Gorsuch nomination. The final vote was recorded as a 54-45 vote, and Gorsuch received his commission on April 10, 2017.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation as the 114th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court—by a vote of 50-48-1—was the most controversial of Trump's nominations to the Supreme Court. This was because of allegations of past sexual misconduct on behalf of Kavanaugh, which he denied, but prompted a fifth day of confirmation hearings to try and investigate the allegations. At the time of his nomination, Kavanaugh was serving as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals on the D.C. Circuit and had previously been appointed by President George W. Bush. Kavanaugh replaced retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The final Supreme Court judge nominated by Trump was Amy Coney Barrett. She was confirmed as the 115th associate justice of the Supreme Cout by a vote of 52-48 on October 26, 2020, and succeeded Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 29, 2020. At the time of her nomination, Barrett was serving as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and she had previously worked as a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on September 24, 2019, that the House would pursue an inquiry into Trump following allegations that the president had requested the Ukrainian government investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in exchange for aid. Trump denied the allegations and went on to call the inquiry a witch hunt. Following weeks of public hearings, the House voted to impeach Trump on December 18, 2019, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Trump joined the short list of presidents who had previously been impeached, which included Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

In January 2020, the World Health Organization declared the continuing spread of COVID-19 a global health emergency. Soon after, the first known case in the United States was identified, and officials urged Trump and his administration to take action, with various models suggesting the possibility for massive death and severe damage to the U.S. economy COVID-19 could cause. At the end of January, Trump imposed a partial ban on foreign travelers from China or who had recently visited China. He also downplayed the threat posed by COVID-19 and promoted unproven and potentially deadly alternative remedies for the virus. Trump went on to declare a national emergency, suspended travel to the United States from European countries, and recommended Americans practice social distancing, while suggesting governors should make their own arrangements to source and obtain respirators and ventilators, considered vital to the response at the time.

The response resulted in widespread business closing and shift to work-from-home arrangements where possible, while other industries saw massive layoffs, producing unemployment levels unseen since the 1930s. Trump signed into law a $2.2 trillion economic relief package, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which included a loan program for small businesses, an increase to unemployment benefits, a one-time payment to households, increased funding for food-stamp and child-nutrition programs, and financial aid to state and local governments.

Part of Trump's COVID-19 response was the public-private partnership called Operation Warp Speed, which was intended to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. The program promoted mass production of multiple vaccines based on different vaccine technology, and based on preliminary evidence allowing for faster distribution. It anticipated that some vaccines would not prove safe and effective, making the program costly, but intended to lead to a viable and widely available vaccine sooner than traditional vaccine developments. The program would be credited by many for developing the eventual vaccines offered by Pfizer and Moderna.

Despite these efforts, by the time of the 2020 election, more than 9.5 million Americans had developed COVID-19, and more than 225,000 were known to have died from the illness. Some suggested these numbers, as well as Trump's predilection to downplay COVID-19 and promote some theories that officials considered to be false, if not conspiracy theories, led to his eventual loss to Joe Biden.

Trump campaigning for his second term.

During the Spring of 2020, Trump began to campaign for a second term in office. He was running this time against Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden. This election cycle was unlike any other, as it took place under the threat and health-based restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump ran his campaign in a nearly similar manner to his 2016 campaign, choosing to appear at rallies attended by hundreds, if not thousands, of people; in contrast to Biden, who campaigned mostly through online video events. During his campaign, both Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. Both recovered quickly, and Trump resumed his campaigning style. The key concerns of the 2020 election included the pandemic, the high unemployment rate caused by the pandemic response, racial tensions across the country, and healthcare.

Due to the novel conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, many voters chose to vote by mail, causing concerns for some about the potential for voter fraud. Trump tended to encourage his constituents to vote in-person, rather than trust the mail-in ballots; while Joe Biden encouraged voters to choose to vote as they were comfortable. Either way, the mail-in ballots meant determining the election results took longer than in previous years, and it took days before Biden could be declared the winner of the election.

The final tally showed Biden won about 81 million votes to Trump's approximate 74 million, and won 306 electoral colleges to Trump's 232. On December, 14, 2020, the electoral college formally elected Biden as the next president of the United States. During the campaign, and in the aftermath, many suggested Biden won because the American people wanted a return to "normal" politics and were tired of Trump's brash style, and Joe Biden represented that normal.

Trump refused to concede the election in the weeks following the 2020 election. He continued to declare that he won the election, even though he and his legal team failed to present evidence to back up those claims. This continued belligerence against the results of the election led to Trump holding a rally near the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, while Congress was in a joint session to count the electoral votes. There, he spoke to thousands of people who had come to Washington, D.C., to hear Trump speak and protest the results of the election, which they tended also to believe had been stolen. It has been alleged that Trump encouraged the crowd to march on Capitol Hill and voice their displeasure, both during the rally and based on comments made on social media.

Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

The result was the massive mob of protestors marched on the U.S. Capitol in what was believed to be an attempt to prevent Congress from declaring Biden the victor. The protestors eventually overran the heavily outnumbered security and police forces, which had forestalled the protestors long enough to evacuate Congress to safety. The protestors broke through the barriers and were able to walk through the Capitol building without contest in most cases.

As a result of the attack on the Capitol, there have been various claims of the number of people who died on the day, ranging from one to ten. However, on the day, one person did die as a result of being shot by Capitol police. Four others died due to medical emergencies, including two protestors who died of a heart attack, one who died of an accidental overdose, and a Capitol police officer who died of a stroke due to the excitement of the day. Other officers committed suicide in the days and months after the riot, apparently in relation to the to the riot, which some count as casualties of the day.

Due to his involvement on January 6th, 2021, both in his public speaking and his social media posting, the House of Representatives voted on January 13, 2021, to impeach Trump for incitement to insurrection by a vote of 232-197; this included ten Republican members who voted to impeach. The resolution alleged that Trump attempted to subvert and obstruct the certification of the election results and incited a crowd to attack the Capitol, which led to the death of various people, among other seditious acts. Trump called the impeachment a continuation of the "political witch hunt" against him. On February 13, 2021, now former president Donald Trump was acquitted of incitement to insurrection. Conviction required two-thirds vote of senators present, and only 57 senators voted to convict while 43 voted to acquit.

In late 2022, Donald Trump announced his intent to run for president again. If he won, it would make him the second president in U.S. history to serve as president in two non-consecutive terms. The announcement came after the 2022 midterm elections, in which Trump was blamed for elevating candidates who parroted his claims about election fraud, which alienated key voters and led to the defeat of those Republican candidates and stall the expected gains for the Republican party.

However, Trump's campaign for a second presidential term faces an uphill battle, as he is entrenched in multiple legal battles in 2023 that may not be resolved until 2024 or later. The first such legal battle is Trump's April 2023 indictment in which he was charged with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records based on the money Trump paid to conceal alleged affairs with three different women. The allegation states that the money, which was paid out by Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen, and his reimbursement of his attorney. Further, the charges allege that Trump attempted to defraud and conceal another crime in the commission of the crimes.

Other potential legal troubles Trump faces include a Georgia election tampering probe, based on comments Trump made in a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, on January 2, 2021, in which Trump asked Raffensberger to "find" enough votes to overturn Trump's election loss in Georgia. A special grand jury was established to investigate the allegations and the potential violations of Georgia's election laws. Although Trump could argue that his comments are protected under the first amendment.

Despite not being impeached for the January 6th, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the U.S. Justice Department has investigations underway into Trump's actions in the 2020 election and the potential role he played in those attacks. Some of the proposed charges in this investigation have included corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and inciting or aiding an insurrection.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent, to investigate Trump's actions around the events of January 6th and to investigate whether Trump improperly retained classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office in 2021. This investigation is based on the potential legality or illegality of Trump willfully removing or retaining classified material.