- Donald Trump has had a winding personal and political career.
- From his marriages, to real estate, to the presidency, he’s captured the public’s attention.
- Here’s all you need to know about Trump’s family, real estate business, and career in politics.
Donald Trump is running for president — again.
The 45th president, businessman, and former reality television star has long been a fixture of the American cultural scene. He officially entered politics on June 17, 2015, when he announced he was entering his first presidential race. Trump’s presidency altered the very fabric of the Republican Party, bucking traditional conservative values and ushering in the MAGA era.
More than nine years after his initial campaign announcement, Trump is in the home stretch of his third bid for the White House and in a virtual dead-heat with Kamala Harris. His most recent campaign has brought about wild, unprecedented moments, including two apparent assassination attempts.
Trump’s support ranges from his loyal base of largely white working-class voters to billionaires like Elon Musk. Here’s a look at the personal history and wide-ranging career of America’s 45th president.
Donald Trump’s early life and family
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. At 78 years old, he is the oldest person to run for president now that President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race. Compared to other former presidents, Trump has released relatively little information on his physical health. In November of 2023, his personal physician said measures of his physical health were within the normal range but did not provide details about his medication, blood pressure, or cholesterol. Standing at a reported height of 6-foot-3, some have expressed concern about Trump’s weight in the past.
His parents, real estate developer Fred Trump and Mary MacLeod, met at a party and got married in 1936. They had five children, with Donald Trump being their fourth. He attended a presbyterian church as a child, but doesn’t seem to have a close religious affiliation nor regularly attend religious services.
Fred Trump made much of his fortune in New York City real estate and was the subject of a Senate investigation related to taking advantage of a federal loan program. He was never charged but was barred from getting federal loan guarantees after admitting wrongdoing.
As a teenager, Donald Trump attended New York Military Academy, a private military school. After graduating, he attended Fordham University in the Bronx for two years before eventually switching to the Wharton School of Finance and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump graduated from Wharton with a bachelor’s degree in economics and talks about his time at the prestigious institution often.
Donald Trump’s career in business and reality television
After graduating college, Trump began working for his father and eventually became the president of a collection of family-owned companies that he later turned into the Trump Organization. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Trump expanded his dad’s business and invested in Manhattan hotels. He was buoyed along by financial and social help from his father, whose New York connections ran deep.
In 1983, Trump opened Trump Tower on 56th Street and 5th Avenue, where he later had an apartment. That same decade, Trump started investing in casinos and bought Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The 1990s recession harmed Trump’s businesses and he was forced to sell various assets, as well as commit to a personal budget. His luck largely changed by the end of the 1990s, though his casinos continued to struggle.
Trump profited from his name throughout his long business career, selling everything from branded cologne and steaks to an online education company. In 2018, the New York Times published a lengthy investigation detailing how Fred Trump funneled money to his son through both illegal and legal means. The outlet reported Donald Trump received the equivalent of $413 million from his dad by the early 2000s.
In 1996, Trump teamed up with NBC to buy the Miss Universe Organization, which encompasses the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants. Trump then starred in a reality television show of his own — The Apprentice. The Emmy-nominated program made him nearly $200 million over 16 years and boosted his image as a self-made billionaire.
Trump’s net worth was $3.8 billion as of September 2024, according to Forbes.
Donald Trump’s various marriages and children
Donald Trump has a checkered marital history, marked by various divorces and alleged affairs.
He met his first wife, Czech model Ivana Marie Zelníčková, in 1976 when she was in New York City for a fashion show. The two got married in 1977 and remained a fixture of the city’s tabloid scene. They had three children together: Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric.
Rumors about Trump having affairs swirled throughout the marriage, including with American actress Marla Maples. Ivana and Trump got divorced in 1992.
One year later, Maples had Trump’s fourth child, Tiffany. The couple got married two months later but split up in 1999.
Trump’s current wife, Melania Trump (née Knauss), is a Slovenian-American former model whom he met in 1998 at a mutual friend’s party. The two dated on and off before tying the knot in 2004 at Mar-a-Lago. The star-studded guest list included the Clintons and Billy Joel.
Trump’s fifth child, Barron Trump, was born in 2006. When Trump moved into the White House, Melania and Barron waited months before joining him at the residence.
Donald Trump’s political rise and the 2016 election
A somewhat ubiquitous presence in American life since the 1980s, Trump floated running for president since his early days as a businessman. People generally didn’t take him seriously and his political affiliations flip-flopped — he went from being a registered Democrat, to a registered Republican, to the frontman for a remade American conservatism.
In 2012, Trump gained prominence in Republican circles for popularizing the “birther” theory — the racist and false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And in the summer of 2015, the prospect of a Trump presidential bid became much more real when he announced his candidacy at a campaign rally in New York City.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump positioned himself as a political outsider and built his platform around economic prosperity, immigration, and a newly combative rhetoric. His campaign was mired in controversy — from the Access Hollywood tape where he bragged about groping women to his failure to quickly denounce the KKK — but he appealed to a wide swath of Americans.
Despite doing poorly in the early Iowa caucus, Trump triumphed in a series of primary wins and had a strong performance on Super Tuesday. After becoming the Republican nominee, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls but ended up victorious on November 8, 2016. He lost the popular vote by more than 2.8 million but won 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.
Donald Trump’s presidency
Once in the White House, Trump was quick to issue a slate of executive orders based on his campaign promises, including building a wall on the southern border and implementing his proposed “Muslim ban,” which quickly faced legal challenges.
While running for office, Trump promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but doing so proved difficult and contentious and he instead chipped away at the law. He also repealed many Obama-era environment policies and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement because he believed it damaged the economy.
Trump took an isolationist approach to foreign policy, imposing tariffs and withdrawing from revising longstanding trade agreements. On the question of the economy, Trump pushed a $1.5 trillion tax cut package through Congress. And regarding the Supreme Court, he appointed three conservative judges and takes credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
By his final years in office, Trump was both president and candidate — he launched his reelection bid in June of 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic upended both the election and the end of Trump’s presidency. He didn’t adopt aggressive measures to curb the spread of the virus early on, and President Joe Biden accused him of ignoring the crisis throughout the election. Trump came down with COVID-19 himself during the final weeks of the campaign and received treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center, benefitting from drugs few Americans could access.
When election day did finally roll around, Trump eventually lost both the popular and electoral college vote. The race was extremely close in key states and took days to call. Trump declared victory one day after the election, before all the votes were tallied, and thus inaugurated his months-long campaign contesting the election results.
After leaving office in January of 2021, Trump and Melania moved to Mar-a-Lago, where he currently lives.
Donald Trump’s controversies and ongoing legal woes
Donald Trump’s legal troubles stretch back to the very beginning of his business career. In 1973, the US Justice Department sued Fred and Donald Trump for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act in various New York City apartment buildings. The parties settled the suit two years later and the Trumps did not admit to any wrongdoing.
Trump’s political rise is backlit by controversy as well, from the personal scandals that have plagued his candidacies to his new status as the first former president convicted of a federal crime. The FBI investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, but ultimately concluded that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove that “members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” Yet the report did find “numerous links” between the two groups.
While in office, Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, but the Senate acquitted him both times.
The chamber first impeached him in 2019 on articles charging him with abuses of power and obstruction of justice. He is accused of offering Ukraine a quid-quo-pro: dig up dirt on Biden in exchange for military aid.
The second impeachment articles relate to his ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 election and actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob stormed the Capitol. As lawmakers convened to certify the election results, Trump encouraged his supporters to attend a rally in DC to protest the joint session of Congress. Thousands showed up, including some from white supremacist groups and right-wing militias.
When speaking to the crowd, Trump did not explicitly call for violence, but encouraged his followers to “fight like hell” — many of those same followers stormed the Capitol building moments later, overwhelming police and forcing lawmakers to flee. Five people died during or shortly after the event, including a Capitol police officer.
Congress reconvened to certify the election results in the early hours of Jan. 7 and Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. Meanwhile, Trump continues to deny that he lost the election in 2020, refusing to admit defeat to this day. Many fear that he will contest the 2024 election results if he loses.
Since leaving office, an avalanche of lawsuits against Trump have piled up, many of which are currently stalled. The former president has been charged in four criminal cases: a federal election interference case, a classified documents case, a Georgia election interference case, and a hush-money case. Trump used money from two of his PACs to pay his mountain of legal fees.
On May 30, 2024, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who alleges she had an affair with Trump. With the guilty verdict, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a crime. The hush-money case sentencing has been moved until Nov. 26, after the election.
The other three cases are all stalled. In the federal election interference case, special prosecutor Jack Smith is accusing Trump of engaging in a broad effort to undermine Biden’s 2020 win. Smith argues that Trump amplified false claims about voter fraud, pressured elected officials, and organized fake electors. A recent Supreme Court ruling derailed the case, but Smith issued a new J6 indictment in August. Legal experts have said that a trial might not start until 2026 due to the thicket of issues to resolve.
Georgia’s election interference case focuses specifically on Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn Biden’s win in the state. District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and allies in August of 2023, but the case has shrunk in scope and a judge dismissed several counts against Trump. The case has been mired in scandals involving Willis’ personal life, and is currently held up as Trump attempts to disqualify Willis as the lead prosecutor.
Smith also led the charge on a federal case accusing Trump of storing sensitive national security documents at Mar-a-Lago after removing them from the White House, and impeding the government from retrieving the documents. A Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed the case over highly controversial allegations that Smith’s special counsel appointment was unconstitutional. Smith’s office is appealing her ruling.
In addition to the criminal trials, a jury found Trump guilty of sexual abuse in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. The saga, which has extended over two suits, relates to Carroll’s allegation that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store and subsequently made defamatory statements. Together, they resulted in a verdict granting Carroll damages of $88.3 million. Trump has appealed the cases.
Should Trump win the election, he will likely throw out the federal criminal cases against him.
Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign and policy stances
Trump announced his third presidential bid just after the 2022 midterms, and almost two years before election day in 2024. He easily beat his primary rivals and prepared for a rematch against Biden.
Trump complained when Biden dropped out of the presidential race at the end of July and Vice President Kamala Harris soared to the top of the ticket. Polls show Trump and Harris remain closely tied in the race for the White House.
The election cycle has been defined by political violence: There have been two alleged assassination attempts against Trump thus far, one in Pennsylvania and the other in Florida. The former president survived both.
On July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, nicking his ear using an AR-style rifle. A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks, whose motive for the shooting remains unclear. The first assassination attempt quickly became a rallying cry for Trump supporters, and Elon Musk endorsed the former president shortly after.
The second apparent assassination attempt occurred on Sept. 15 in Palm Beach, Florida at a golf course. Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect, may have staked out the course for 12 hours. Law enforcement officials said that Routh got close to Trump but didn’t have a clear line of sight of the former president. They also said that a Secret Service agent spotted Routh’s rifle through a fence and immediately opened fire, at which point the suspect fled. On Sept. 16, Routh was charged on two firearms counts.
Despite the many twists in the election cycle and the two candidates’ wildly different politics, Harris and Trump remain virtually tied in the polls. The competition has turned nasty at times, with Trump questioning Harris’ race and contending with a pattern of misogynistic comments toward female opponents.
In terms of the economy, a top issue for many voters, Trump has promised to extend his hallmark 2017 tax cuts and eliminate taxes on tips. He’s also threatening a broad 10 to 20% tariff on imported goods, which economists predict would fuel inflation.
Trump’s views on abortion have become a sticky subject in the post-Roe environment — he takes credit for overturning Roe v. Wade but has tempered his stance to appeal to rising pro-choice sentiment. Trump has said that states should decide the laws around abortion and hasn’t publicly supported a federal ban. In August, Trump said that the federal government should pay for costly IVF treatments.
Immigration has emerged as a key campaign issue and Trump has promised mass deportations. His team has also drafted memos to implement curb migration and implement the same hardline border policies he adopted during his first term.
Trump has criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza at times, but portrays himself as a strong defender of the Israeli state and hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago. With respect to the war in Ukraine, Trump has repeatedly said he could quickly end the Ukraine war, though hasn’t specified how. He’s avoided explicitly saying that he wants Ukraine to win. And on the question of China, Trump continues to take a tough tone — he’s threatened to levy a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.
On the campaign trail, Trump has vowed to make sure America leads the world in oil and gas production. He’s also promised to cut energy and electricity prices by more than half, and roll back Biden’s electric vehicle policies.
Whether Trump regains control of the White House, the Republican party and country will continue to grapple with the MAGA movement’s enduring cultural and political force.
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