Background

Ethnicity: Trump's ancestors on his father's side originated from the German village of Kallstadt in the Palatinate and those on his mother's side were from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens, New York City. He is the fourth of five children of Frederick (Fred) Christ Trump, a successful real estate developer, and Mary MacLeod. Donald's elder sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, served as a United States district court judge and acted as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit until her retirement in 2011. His elder brother, Frederick, Jr. (Freddy), worked briefly for his father's business before becoming an airline pilot in the 1960s.

Education

Donald Trump attended the Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade and at the age of 13 he joined the New York Military Academy.

In August 1964, Trump entered Fordham University. Two years later, however, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania because it offered one of the few real estate studies departments in United States academia at the time. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics in 1968.

Trump has numerous Honorary Doctorate degrees from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Wagner College in Staten Island, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, and Liberty University in Lynchburg.

Career

Upon his graduation Trump began working full-time for his father's business, helping to manage its holdings of rental housing, then estimated at between 10,000 and 22,000 units. In 1974, he became president of a conglomeration of Trump-owned corporations and partnerships, which he later named the Trump Organization.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Trump-owned housing developments in New York City, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Norfolk, Virginia, were the target of several complaints of racial discrimination against African Americans and other minority groups. In 1973, Fred and Donald Trump, along with their company, were sued by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act (1968) in the operation of 39 apartment buildings in New York City. The Trumps initially countersued the Justice Department for $100 million, alleging harm to their reputations. The suit was settled two years later under an agreement that did not require the Trumps to admit guilt.

In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Donald Trump greatly expanded his father's business by investing in luxury hotels and residential properties and by shifting its geographic focus to Manhattan and later to Atlantic City, New Jersey. In doing so, he relied heavily on loans, gifts, and other financial assistance from his father, as well as on his father's political connections in New York City. In 1976 he purchased the decrepit Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Station under a complex profit-sharing agreement with the city that included a 40-year property tax abatement, the first such tax break granted to a commercial property in New York City. Relying on a construction loan guaranteed by his father and the Hyatt Corporation, which became a partner in the project, Trump refurbished the building and reopened it in 1980 as the 1,400-room Grand Hyatt Hotel. In 1983, he 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 eventually contained 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 (1984), the Trump Parc luxury condominium complex (1986), and the 19-story Plaza Hotel (1988), a historic landmark for which Trump paid more than $400 million.

In the 1980s Trump invested heavily in the casino business in Atlantic City, where his properties eventually included Harrah's at Trump Plaza (1984, later renamed Trump Plaza), Trump's Castle Casino Resort (1985), and the Trump Taj Mahal (1990), then the largest casino in the world. During that period Trump also purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the short-lived United States Football League; Mar-a-Lago, a 118-room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, built in the 1920s by the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post; a 282-foot yacht, then the world's second largest, which he named the Trump Princess; and an East Coast air-shuttle service, which he called Trump Shuttle.

When the United States economy fell into recession in 1990, many of Trump's businesses suffered, and he soon had trouble making payments on his approximately $5 billion debt, some $900 million of which he had personally guaranteed. Under a restructuring agreement with several banks, Trump was forced to surrender his airline, which was taken over by US Airways in 1992; to sell the Trump Princess; to take out second or third mortgages on nearly all of his properties and to reduce his ownership stakes in them; and to commit himself to living on a personal budget of $450,000 a year. Despite those measures, the Trump Taj Mahal declared bankruptcy in 1991, and two other casinos owned by Trump, as well as his Plaza Hotel in New York City, went bankrupt in 1992. Following those setbacks, most major banks refused to do any further business with him. Estimates of Trump's net worth during this period ranged from $1.7 billion to minus $900 million.

Trump's fortunes rebounded with the stronger economy of the later 1990s and with the decision of the Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG to establish a presence in the United States commercial real estate market. Deutsche Bank extended hundreds of millions of dollars in credit to Trump in the late 1990s and the 2000s for projects including Trump World Tower (2001) in New York and Trump International Hotel and Tower (2009) in Chicago. In the early 1990s Trump had floated a plan to his creditors to convert his Mar-a-Lago estate into a luxury housing development consisting of several smaller mansions, but local opposition led him instead to turn it into a private club, which was opened in 1995. In 1996 Trump partnered with the NBC television network to purchase the Miss Universe Organization, which produced the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants. Trump's casino businesses continued to struggle, however, in 2004 his company Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy after several of its properties accumulated unmanageable debt, and the same company, renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts, went bankrupt again in 2009.

In addition to his real-estate ventures, in 2004 Trump premiered a reality television series in which he starred, The Apprentice, which featured teams of contestants competing in various business-related projects, with a single contestant ultimately winning a lucrative one-year contract as a Trump employee ("apprentice"). The Emmy-nominated show, in which Trump "fired" one or more contestants on a weekly basis, helped him to further enhance his reputation as a shrewd businessman and self-made billionaire. In 2008 the show was revamped as The Celebrity Apprentice, with newsmakers and entertainers as contestants.

Trump marketed his name as a brand in numerous other business ventures including Trump Financial, a mortgage company, and the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (formerly Trump University), an online education company focusing on real estate investment and entrepreneurialism. The latter firm, which ceased operating in 2011, was the target of class-action lawsuits by former students and a separate action by the attorney general of New York state, alleging fraud.

Trump was credited as co-author of a number of books on entrepreneurship and his business career, including Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), Trump: The Art of the Comeback (1997), Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006), Trump 101: The Way to Success (2006), and Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success (2008).

In 2009, Trump rejoined the Republican Party and maintained a high public profile during the 2012 presidential election. Although he did not run for office at that time, he gained much attention for repeatedly and falsely claiming that Democratic President Barack Obama was not a natural-born United States citizen.

In June 2015 Trump announced that he would be a candidate in the United States presidential election of 2016, pledging to "make America great again."

On the campaign trail, Trump quickly established himself as a political outsider, a common strategy among nonincumbent candidates at all levels. In Trump's case the stance proved popular with conservative voters - especially those in the Tea Party movement - and he frequently topped opinion polls, besting established Republican politicians.

After a loss in the Iowa caucuses to open up the primary season in February 2016, Trump rebounded by winning the next three contests, and he extended his lead with a strong showing on Super Tuesday - when primaries and caucuses were held in 11 states - in early March. After a landslide victory in the Indiana primary in May, Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee as his last two opponents, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, dropped out of the race.

In July 2016 Trump announced that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence would be his vice-presidential running mate. At the Republican National Convention the following week, Trump was officially named the party's nominee.

On November 8, 2016, Trump bested Clinton in a chain of critical Rust Belt states, and he was elected president. Although Trump won the electoral college vote by 304 to 227, and thereby the presidency, he lost the nationwide popular vote by more than 2.8 million. Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017. On March 17, 2020, he became the Republican presumptive nominee for a second term. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden.

Achievements

• 

  A business tycoon, a TV personality with household recognition, and later the President of the United States after the first-ever run for office - Donald Trump is often called the very definition of the American success story. He has had a remarkably steady approval rating due to his staunchly loyal supporters. Trump's policies have put the American economy into high gear. Since he was elected, 7.3 million jobs have been created. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit record highs over 100 times under Trump. Economic confidence rebounded to record highs under Trump because his pro-growth policies put American workers and businesses first.
  
  Trump appeared on the Forbes List of the World's richest men almost every year, save for a brief period of time. Upon his election, Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $3.5 billion making him one of the richest politicians in American history.
  
  In 2004 and 2005, he was nominated for Primetime Emmy for The Apprentice. In 2007, he earned the Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to television. In 2013, he was inducted into the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden due to his contributions to the promotion of several WWE shows.
  
  Donald is also a recipient of the Order of King Abdulaziz and the Medal of Bravery.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

    (In Never Give Up, Donald Trump tells the dramatic stories...)

    2008
  • The America We Deserve

    (The America We Deserve is the essential book for anyone w...)

    2000
  • Trump: The Art of the Comeback

    (In the book, Donald Trump writes about his bankruptcy in ...)

    1997
  • Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America

    (In Crippled America, Donald Trump describes his views on ...)

    2015
  • Trump: The Art of the Deal

    (The book talks about Trump's childhood in Jamaica Estates...)

    1987
  • Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life 2007

Religion

Trump is a Presbyterian. He attended a Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens.

In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church. The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale, ministered to Trump's family until his death in 1993. Trump has described Peale as a mentor. In November 2019, Trump appointed his personal pastor, televangelist Paula White, to the White House Office of Public Liaison.

Trump also said: "I'm a Protestant, I'm a Presbyterian. And you know I've had a good relationship with the church over the years. I think religion is a wonderful thing. I think my religion is a wonderful religion."

Politics

On January 28, 2017, Donald Trump signed decrees on protecting Americans from terrorists entering the country and reorganization of the American military. Trump also imposed a life-long ban on lobbying for foreign governments by United States administration officials and a five-year ban on any other lobbying. To support United States economic growth, he signed two executive orders that amended the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 restricting access to financial resources in the country and canceled the Obama administration's financial consulting decree. It required brokers to act solely in the interests of the client, rather than their own.

During the NATO summit on May 25, 2017, Trump convinced the alliance to join the international coalition to fight ISIS. On June 7, 2017, Trump presented a plan to improve the United States infrastructure. The plan helped create new jobs and stimulate the growth of the American economy. Investments in infrastructure from the state budget are expected in the amount of $200 billion, and they can also be increased to $1 trillion. These funds are planned to be invested in projects subject to renovation, air traffic control and agriculture.

On July 14, 2017, Donald Trump announced his support for the work of the Republican Party to reverse the ObamaCare reform. Also, the United States President noted the importance of adopting a new health care reform after seven years of ObamaCare.

Since the beginning of his presidency, Trump has made a number of foreign policy decisions aimed at redefining the United States "global commitments," such as the partial withdrawal of troops from parts of Syria, the United States withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's Nuclear Program, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and UNESCO. He proposed replacing the agreement on the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), introducing a ban on the entry of residents of some Muslim countries into the United States, and tightening sanctions against Iran.

Views

Donald Trump was accused of racism for insisting that a group of black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger attack, even after they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002. He continued to maintain this position as late as 2016. Trump's racially insensitive statements have been condemned by many observers in the U.S. and around the world, but accepted by his supporters either as a rejection of political correctness or because they harbor similar racial sentiments. Several studies and surveys have stated that racist attitudes and racial resentment have fueled Trump's political ascendance, and have become more significant than economic factors in determining party allegiance of voters. According to an October 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll, 45% of American voters view Trump as racist and 40% do not. Trump himself proclaimed on more than one occasion that he was "the least racist person" in the world.

Quotations: "Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

"Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here."

"You know the funny thing, I don't get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people."

"No dream is too big. No challenge is too great. Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach."

"I've always won, and I'm going to continue to win. And that's the way it is."

"We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams."

"Together, We will make America strong again. We will make wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together, we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America."

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."

"One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don't go into government."

"If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable."

"I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big."

"Politicians can't manage. All they can do is talk."

"A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation."

"Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make."

"Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that's more productive."

"Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible."

"In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish."

"People love me. And you know what, I have been very successful. Everybody loves me."

"In July of 2004, I came out strongly against the war with Iraq because it was going to destabilize the Middle East."

Membership

Trump is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and receives an annual pension of more than $110,000.

Personality

Trump's personal style was unusual, if not unique, among national political figures in modern United States history. In part reflecting his experiences as a prominent figure in the New York real estate industry, Trump was fiercely competitive as well as intensely concerned with demonstrating his success and accomplishments to others. Indeed, from the very beginning of his career, he cultivated and cherished his reputation as a shrewd businessman, an image that often aided him in his real estate dealings and which he eventually exploited as a brand beginning in the 1990s. That concern, however, was accompanied by an unusual sensitivity to criticism and a tendency to retaliate harshly against those who, in his view, had betrayed him or treated him unfairly.

In keeping with his bellicose and confrontational style, Trump in his business career characteristically used blunt language as a weapon against his rivals and adversaries, pointedly insulting or belittling them in the press in retaliation for their real or perceived slights. Perhaps surprisingly, Trump did not significantly alter his style or temper his rhetoric upon his entry into politics, notwithstanding the conventional view that success in politics is necessarily a matter of persuasion and compromise rather than "hitting back harder." The advent of Twitter in 2006 eventually gave Trump (who joined the service in 2009) a larger platform for his unfiltered political comments, once he began regularly tweeting about politics in about 2011. During the presidential primaries and in the 2015-2016 election campaign, Trump frequently used his Twitter account, which had more than 40 million followers, to angrily attack individual Democrats, his Republican rivals and critics, members of the news media, and others in comments that were widely perceived as aggressive, boastful, petty, vindictive, juvenile, and vulgar. Trump similarly declined to filter himself in speeches, once even mocking the physical disability of a reporter he disliked. Another unique feature of Trump's rhetoric was the extremely large number of his public statements that were shown to be false or misleading by the press or by independent fact-checking organizations (by early 2020 the Washington Post had counted more than 16,000 such claims since Trump assumed office in January 2017). Although Trump's detractors, including some in the Republican Party, admonished him for what they considered his undignified behaviour, their criticism only provoked him to fresh attacks. Despite some speculation after his election that the weight of the presidential office and his eventual need for tangible political and diplomatic successes would lead him to adopt a more conventional demeanour, his confrontational style and rhetoric continued unchanged during his presidency, and indeed the targets of his abuse only expanded, contributing to a general perception that Trump had widened the already considerable partisan divisions within American politics. In any event, Trump certainly distinguished himself from previous United States presidents by his heavy use of social media. He became the first president to rely on Twitter as a primary means of communication with his political supporters and the press, using it even as a venue for semi-official presidential statements.

Physical Characteristics: Trump abstains from alcohol. He has never smoked cigarettes or cannabis. Donald considers exercising a waste of energy.

In January 2018, White House physician Ronny Jackson said Trump was in excellent health and that his cardiac assessment revealed no issues. In February 2019, after a new examination, White House physician Sean Conley said Trump was in "very good health overall," although he was clinically obese. His 2019 coronary CT calcium scan score indicates he suffers from a form of coronary artery disease common for white men of his age.

In June 2020, a memorandum saying "the data indicates that the President remains healthy" was released. It summarized medical appointments that had taken place between November 2019 and 2020. It also said Trump had completed two-weeks of taking hydroxychloroquine with zinc and vitamin D safely and without side effects as a preventive measure against contracting COVID-19.

Quotes from others about the person

• Moon Jae-in: "President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize."
  
  Tim Allen: "I think it's funny because Donald Trump is kind of in the spirit of old Greek tyrants where they used to vote in a guy that had no encumbrances. So the smartest thing about him, which is probably most overlooked, to me, is that he doesn't owe anybody anything and if he would just stick to fixing the bridges, roads and infrastructures that's what he knows how to do...just keep him doing that."
  
  Andrew Anglin: "We support Trump because he is the savior of the White race, sent by God to free us from the shackles of the Jew occupation and establish a 1000 Reich."
  
  Hadley Arkes: "Mr. Trump is a wild card, but he is likely to sign pro-life measures, and he is seeking advice now from the right people to appoint a plausible successor to Justice Scalia. In this Guide for the Perplexed, we may find reason to bite our lips and take the Wild Card over the brutal Sure Thing on the other side."
  
  Dan Balz: "Viewed through any conventional lens, President-elect Donald Trump's candidacy was improbable from start to finish. Today, two things about his victory seem to be in sharper focus: one, that Trump's victory might best be understood as the success of the country's first independent president, and second, that the Trump coalition may be even more uniquely his than President Obama's has turned out to be."
  
  Dan Balz: "Trump owes his success in part to the fact that he ran for president in an environment that favored change over the status quo. But his luck or genius goes beyond that. It has long been noted that the conditions have existed for an independent candidate to run a serious campaign for president."
  
  Lou Barletta: "Donald Trump's voice is resonating with average Americans who feel their voice has been lost by their party. I believe this will become a new Republican Party, one that we should embrace. We should be the party of working men and women, the party of America first."
  
  Herman Cain: "Hillary is stealing America, whereas Donald Trump is trying to save our society."

Interests

• real estate, entertainment, gaming and sports

• Writers

  Erich Maria Remarque

• Sport & Clubs

  golf; New York Yankees, New York Mets, Philadelphia 76ers, Buffalo Bills, New Jersey Generals

• Music & Bands

  classic rock, reggae; Neil Young, Rolling Stones, Queen, Elton John, Twisted Sister, Tony Bennett, Eminem

Connections

In 1977 Trump married Ivana Zelníčková Winklmayr, a Czech model, with whom he had three children - Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric - before the couple divorced in 1992. Their married life, as well as Trump's business affairs, were a staple of the tabloid press in New York City during the 1980s. Trump married the American actress Marla Maples after she gave birth to Trump's fourth child, Tiffany, in 1993. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1999. In 2005 Trump married the Slovene model Melania Knauss, and their son, Barron, was born the following year. Melania Trump became only the second foreign-born first lady of the United States upon Trump's inauguration as president in 2017.

Father:

Fred Trump

(October 11, 1905 - June 25, 1999)

Fred Trump was a prominent real estate developer in New York City.

Mother:

Mary Anne (MacLeod) Trump

(May 10, 1912 - August 7, 2000)

Mary Anne Trump was a Scottish-American homemaker and philanthropist.

Spouse:

Melania (Knauss) Trump

(born April 26, 1970)

Melania Trump is a former Slovenian-American model, businesswoman, and the current first lady of the United States.

Son:

Barron Trump

(born March 20, 2006)

ex-spouse:

Ivana Zelníčková Trump

(born February 20, 1949)

Ivana Marie Trump is a Czech-American businesswoman and former model.

ex-spouse:

Marla Maples

(born October 27, 1963)

Marla Ann Maples is an American actress and television personality.

Son:

Donald Trump Jr.

(born December 31, 1977)

Donald John Trump Jr. is an American businessman and former reality television personality.

Daughter:

Ivanka Trump

(born October 30, 1981)

Son:

Eric Trump

(born January 6, 1984)

Eric Frederick Trump is an American businessman, philanthropist, and former reality television personality.

Daughter:

Tiffany Trump

(born October 13, 1993)

Tiffany Ariana Trump is an American socialite. She is notable for Instagram account, where she frequently posts pictures of her lifestyle.

Sister:

Maryanne Trump Barry

(born 1937)

Maryanne Barry was a senior federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She became inactive in 2017 after her brother took office, and retired in 2019

Brother:

Frederick Trump Jr.

(1938 - 1981)

colleague:

Mike Pence

(born June 7, 1959)

Michael Richard Pence is an American politician and lawyer serving as the 48th vice president of the United States, since 2017. He previously was the 50th governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017 and a member of the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013.

References

• The Making of Donald Trump Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who had spent thirty years chronicling Donald Trump for the New York Times and other leading newspapers, takes readers from the origins of the Trump family fortune - his grandfather's Yukon bordellos during the Gold Rush - to his tumultuous gambling and real estate dealings in New York and Atlantic City, all the way to his election as president of the United States, giving his readers a deeply researched and shockingly full picture of one of the most controversial figures of present time.
  2016
• Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other Conrad Black, bestselling author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, turns his attention to his "friend" President Donald J. Trump and provides the most intriguing and significant analysis yet of Trump's political rise. Ambitious in intellectual scope, contrarian in many of its opinions, and admirably concise, this is surely set to be one of the most provocative political books you are likely to read this year.
  2018
• President Donald Trump The book profiles the forty-fifth president of the United States, covering his childhood, his education, his family, his careers as a real estate mogul and television star, and his election.
  2017
• Trump's America: The Truth about Our Nation's Great Comeback Throughout Trump's America, Gingrich distills decades of experience fighting Washington elites with a lifetime of studying history to help people understand how they can all keep working to make America great.
  2018
• Donald Trump: The Making of a World View This book reveals the world view that Trump brings to the Oval Office. It shows how that world view was formed, what might result if it is applied in policy terms and the potential consequences for the rest of the world.
  2017
• Trump's profile on WhiteHouse.gov
• Donald J. Trump's Twitter