Donald Trump was the 45th President of the United States, serving a single term from 2017 to 2021. He is presently vying for re-election in the 2024 election. Donald Trump was a real estate mogul and former reality TV star before entering politics. When he opened the Grand Hyatt New York in 1980, he became the city’s most well-known developer. Trump first appeared on the successful NBC reality show The Apprentice in 2004.
Turning to politics, Trump launched his campaign for President of the United States on the Republican ticket in 2015. On July 19, 2016, Trump became the official Republican nominee, and on November 8, 2016, he defeated Democratic contender Hillary Clinton to become the nation’s 45th president. Four years later, Trump was defeated in his reelection effort by former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump, who has been embroiled in multiple controversies, became the first former president to be indicted on criminal charges in March 2023.
Early Life and Education
Donald John Trump was born in Queens, New York, on June 14, 1946. He was the fourth of five children born to real estate mogul Frederick and socialite and philanthropist Mary Trump. Donald was a boisterous, outspoken child. The Trumps’ fortune grew during the postwar real estate boom of the 1950s. Trump’s mother reared him as a Presbyterian, and he now identifies as a mainline Protestant.
Trump’s parents sent him to the New York Military Academy when he was 13 years old, expecting that the school’s discipline would channel his energy in a positive way. He excelled both socially and academically at the academy, growing to become a great athlete and student leader by the time he graduated in 1964.
In 1964, Trump enrolled at Fordham University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance two years later and graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics. During his college years, Trump worked part-time at his father’s real estate company. He also obtained education deferments for the draft during the Vietnam War, as well as a one-year medical deferment after graduating.
Parents and Siblings
Father
Frederick Trump was a real estate developer and builder who specialized in the construction and operation of middle-income apartments in Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. He passed away in 1999.
Mother
Mary Anne MacLeod, 17, immigrated from Tong, Scotland, in 1929. In 1936, she married Fred Trump. The couple settled in Jamaica, Queens, an area teeming with Western European immigrants at the time. Mary rose through the ranks of New York society and philanthropy as her family’s fortune grew. Mary passed away in the year 2000.
Siblings
Trump is the fourth of five children.
- Maryanne Trump Barry was a senior judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit who retired shortly after her brother was elected president. She stepped down from the bench in February 2019.
- Fred Trump Jr. briefly worked for his father before becoming a pilot. He suffered with drinking and died at the age of 43 in 1981, prompting Donald to declare that he never drinks or uses drugs. “He had a profound impact on my life, because you never know where you’re going to end up,” Trump explained.
- Elizabeth Trump Grau, the wife of film producer James Grau, is a retired banker.
- Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, spent much of his career working for the family business. He died in 2020, at the age of 71.
Wives
Ivana Trump
Trump married his first wife, Ivana Trump (née Zelnickova Winklmayr), a New York fashion model who had been an alternate on the Czech Olympic Ski Team in 1972, in 1977. She was named vice president in charge of design in the Trump Organization and was instrumental in overseeing the Commodore and Plaza Hotel renovations.
Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka, and Eric were the couple’s three children. They had a widely publicized divorce, which was formalized in 1992.
Marla Maples
Trump married Marla Maples, an actress with whom he had been acquainted for some time and who already had a daughter, Tiffany, in 1993.
Trump eventually filed for divorce from Maples in 1997, and the divorce was finalized in June 1999. Maples received $2 million in a prenuptial agreement.
Melania Trump
Trump is currently married to Melania Trump (née Knauss), a former Slovenian model who is more than 23 years his younger. The pair married in a grandiose and well-publicized wedding in January 2005. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton were among the numerous celebrity guests at the wedding.
Children
Trump is the father of five children. He and his first wife, Ivana Trump, produced three children: Donald Trump Jr. in 1977, Ivanka Trump in 1981, and Eric Trump in 1984. Tiffany Trump was born in 1993 to Trump and his second wife, Marla Maples. In March 2006, Trump’s current wife Melania Trump gave birth to Trump’s youngest kid, Barron Trump.
Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, Trump’s sons, work as executive vice presidents for The Trump Organization. They took over the family business while their father continues to serve as president.
Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter, was also an executive vice president of The Trump Organization. She left the company and her own fashion label to work in her father’s administration as an unpaid presidential assistant. Jared Kushner, her husband, is also a top adviser to President Trump.
Trump’s Real Estate and Businesses
Trump followed in his father’s footsteps into real estate development, bringing his loftier goals to the family firm. Trump’s businesses include The Trump Organization, Trump Tower, Atlantic City casinos, and television brands such as The Apprentice and Miss Universe. Trump has agreements with the Javits Center and the Grand Hyatt New York, as well as other real estate enterprises in New York, Florida, and Los Angeles.
Forms for filing federal income tax returns Trump’s golf facilities, notably Trump National Doral and Mar-a-Lago in Florida, earn over half of his income, according to tax returns released in 2017. Aircraft, products, and royalties from his two books, The Art of the Deal and Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, are among his other financial enterprises.
The Art of the Deal
Trump co-authored the book The Art of the Deal with Tony Schwartz in 1987. Trump outlines how he effectively closes commercial agreements in his book.
“I DON’T do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form,” Trump wrote.
The book was a New York Times best-seller, though the quantity of copies sold has been disputed; sales have been estimated to be between 1 and 4 million copies to date. Schwartz then became an ardent opponent of both the book and Trump, expressing guilt for making the president “more appealing than he is.”
Wealth
Trump’s net worth has been the subject of much speculation over the years. Because Trump has not made his tax returns public, it is impossible to estimate his wealth in the past or presently. However, according to the Office of Government Ethics, Trump valued his businesses at least $1.37 billion on his 2017 federal financial disclosure form. According to Trump’s 2018 disclosure form, his total revenue for the year was at least $434 million.
Trump estimated his net worth to be around $1.5 billion in 1990. The real estate market was in decline at the time, lowering the value and income from Trump’s enterprise. The Trump Organization required a significant influx of financing to keep it from collapsing, raising concerns about the corporation’s ability to survive bankruptcy. Some observers saw Trump’s decline as a metaphor for many of the 1980s’ financial, economic, and social excesses.
The New York Times discovered in a May 2019 study of ten years of Trump’s tax returns showed his businesses lost money every year between 1985 and 1994. According to the publication, Trump’s businesses lost $1.17 billion over the decade.
Later, Trump defended himself on Twitter, calling the Times piece “a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!” He tweeted that he declared “losses for tax purposes,” which he described as a “sport” among real estate developers.
Tax Returns
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s net worth was called into doubt, and he courted controversy by repeatedly refusing to release his tax returns while they were being reviewed by the Internal Revenue Service. He did not release his tax returns during the campaign and has yet to do so. It was the first time since Richard Nixon in 1972 that a major party candidate did not reveal such material to the public before a presidential election.
After Democrats reclaimed control of the House in 2018, Trump was once again pressured to reveal his tax returns. In April 2019, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal requested six years of the president’s personal and corporate tax returns from the IRS. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin turned down the request, as well as Neal’s subsequent demand for the materials.
The New York State Assembly enacted legislation in May allowing tax officials to release the president’s state returns to the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee, and Joint Committee on Taxation for any “specified and legitimate legislative purpose.” Given that the Trump Organization’s headquarters are in New York City, it was expected that the state returns would contain much of the same information as the president’s federal returns.
In September 2019, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. issued a subpoena to the accounting firm Mazars USA for Trump’s personal and company tax returns dating back to 2011, leading the president’s lawyers to file a challenge. In October, a federal district court in Manhattan dismissed Trump’s complaint, though the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed to temporarily halt enforcement of the subpoena while the matter was heard. A few days later, the same appeals court denied Trump’s request to suppress another subpoena issued to Mazars USA, this time by the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The cases were brought to the Supreme Court in May 2019 after the Court agreed to hear arguments in December 2019 on whether the president could prohibit the disclosure of his financial information to congressional committees and the Manhattan district attorney.
The New York Times reported in September 2020 that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no income taxes in 10 of the prior 15 years. According to a lawyer for the Trump Organization, “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” in the Times piece.
Lawsuits and Investigations
Fair Housing Act Discrimination Trial
The federal government filed a lawsuit against Trump, his father, and their firm in 1973, stating that they had discriminated against renters and potential tenants based on their race, which was a violation of the Fair Housing Act, which is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
The dispute was settled in 1975 after a lengthy court battle. As part of the deal, the Trump organization was required to educate employees about the Fair Housing Act and tell the community about its fair housing practices.
Trump wrote about the resolution of the case in his 1987 memoir Art of the Deal: “In the end, the government couldn’t prove its case, and we ended up taking a minor settlement without admitting any guilt.”
Trump University
Trump established his for-profit Trump University in 2005, offering seminars in real estate and wealth acquisition and management. The venture has been under review practically since its inception, and it was still the subject of many lawsuits when he ran for president in 2015.
Claimants accused Trump of fraud, false advertising, and breach of contract in the proceedings. The suits sparked controversy when Trump argued that because of his Mexican background, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial in hearing two class action lawsuits.
On November 18, 2016, Trump, who had earlier stated that he would go to trial, agreed to settle three of the claims for $25 million without admitting wrongdoing. In a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, he called the settlement, “a stunning reversal by Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
Donald J. Trump Foundation
Later, it was revealed that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi chose not to join the current New York fraud lawsuit in a different event involving Trump University. This came just days after she got a substantial campaign gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a private charity organization created in 1988 to make donations to nonprofit organizations. Bondi’s name was reported to be on Trump’s list of potential U.S. Attorney General candidates in November 2016.
As a result of the illicit payment to Bondi’s campaign, Trump was obliged to pay an IRS penalty, and his foundation was investigated for using funds for non-charitable purposes. According to IRS records, The Trump Foundation has received no charitable gifts from Trump since 2008, and all donations since then have come from outside sources.
After Trump admitted to using foundation funds to support his presidential campaign and settle debts, he was sentenced to pay $2 million in penalties, and the foundation was forced to close its doors.
Political Party
Trump is a registered Republican at the moment. In the last three decades, he has switched parties multiple times.
Trump registered as a Republican in 1987 and as an Independent two years later, in 1989. Trump ran for president for the first time in 2000 on the Reform ticket. He registered as a Democrat in 2001.
By 2009, Trump had returned to the Republican Party, though he registered as an Independent in 2011 in order to run in the presidential election the following year. He rejoined the Republican Party in 2012 to support Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and he has remained a Republican ever since.
2016 Presidential Campaign vs. Clinton
In the 2016 presidential election, Trump became the official Republican nominee against Democrat Hillary Clinton. On November 8, 2016, he won the majority of electoral college votes, defying surveys and media expectations, HowAfrica had reported. Despite losing the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s electoral victory — 306 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 232 — secured his election as the 45th President of the United States.
After one of the most heated presidential campaigns in US history, blue-collar and working-class Americans saw Trump’s election as a resounding rejection of establishment politics.
In his victory speech, Trump said: “I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans.” About his supporters, he said: “As I’ve said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their families.”