01 / Childhood
Queens beginnings in a real-estate family
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in New York City, the fourth of five children of Frederick Christ Trump Sr. and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. His mother was born in Scotland and immigrated to the United States in 1930; his father was born in New York to a family of German ancestry. Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, an affluent enclave in Queens.
Fred Trump built a successful real-estate company, Elizabeth Trump & Son, focused largely on middle-class housing in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The Trump sons were expected to spend time around the family business. Donald later described his father as a major influence, and the business environment of construction sites, rent rolls, local politics, and New York property development shaped his understanding of power and negotiation.
Accounts of Trump’s childhood describe him as energetic, competitive, and difficult to discipline. At age 13, his parents sent him to the New York Military Academy, where the structured environment emphasized hierarchy, drills, discipline, and visible rank.
02 / Formation
Military academy, Wharton, and early ambition
Trump has said he enjoyed aspects of military academy life, but the academy was the extent of his military experience. He later attended Fordham University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School in 1968.
During the Vietnam War era, Trump received student deferments and later a medical deferment related to bone spurs. When the draft lottery was instituted in 1969, his birthday drew a high number, and he was not called to serve.
The defining pattern of Trump’s early adult life was already visible: inherited access, public confidence, intense competitiveness, and a desire to move from outer-borough real estate into Manhattan visibility.
03 / Business career
From family housing to Manhattan spectacle
After graduating, Trump joined his father’s company full time. In 1971, he took control of the family business; in 1973, it was renamed the Trump Organization. That same year, the U.S. Justice Department accused the company of discriminating against Black rental applicants. The company settled without admitting wrongdoing and agreed to steps intended to open apartments to Black tenants.
Trump’s major shift was geographic and symbolic: from outer-borough residential housing to Manhattan prestige. The redevelopment of the bankrupt Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, aided by a major New York City tax abatement, gave him a highly visible Manhattan foothold. Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue followed, combining luxury retail, office space, private residence, and brand theater.
In the 1980s, Trump expanded into Atlantic City casinos, including Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, and the Trump Taj Mahal. These projects gave him national attention but also produced heavy debt. Several casino-related companies entered bankruptcy protection in the 1990s and later years. Trump argued that he used bankruptcy law strategically to reduce debt; critics emphasized losses to investors, vendors, and creditors.
04 / Celebrity and media
The brand became the product
Even when parts of the business struggled, Trump preserved and expanded a public image of wealth and victory. His 1987 book Trump: The Art of the Deal helped make him a national business celebrity. Over time, the Trump name appeared on hotels, golf courses, condominiums, steaks, vodka, bottled water, neckties, and licensing ventures in the United States and abroad.
From 1996 to 2015, Trump was associated with the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants. His media profile grew even larger through NBC’s The Apprentice, which began in 2004. The show’s ritual phrase, “You’re fired,” helped cement an image of Trump as decisive, blunt, wealthy, and in command — an image that later became politically useful.
05 / Family life
Private life lived in public
Trump’s personal life has long been a part of his public story. He married Ivana Zelníčková in 1977; they had three children — Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric — before divorcing in 1990 after intense tabloid coverage. He married Marla Maples in 1993; they had one daughter, Tiffany, and divorced in 1999. In 2005, he married Melania Knauss, with whom he has one son, Barron.
His adult children, especially Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, became visible in business, media, and politics. During Trump’s first presidency, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner served as advisers, while Donald Jr. and Eric were closely associated with the Trump Organization and political movement.
06 / Politics and first presidency
From flirtation to presidency
Trump publicly toyed with presidential politics for decades, including talk of a 1988 run, a brief Reform Party exploration in 2000, and renewed Republican speculation in 2012. He also became a prominent promoter of the false “birther” conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s birthplace, which he did not disavow until 2016.
On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his presidential campaign at Trump Tower. Running on the slogan “Make America Great Again”, he framed politics around immigration restriction, trade grievance, anti-establishment anger, media conflict, and promises of national revival. He defeated a large Republican primary field and then defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College in 2016 while losing the popular vote.
As the 45th president, Trump governed through a confrontational style and heavy use of media. Major features of his first term included immigration restrictions, the travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority countries, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, tax cuts, deregulation, a trade war with China, reshaping of the federal judiciary, and major foreign-policy shifts in the Middle East.
He was impeached in 2019 over allegations that he pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden; the Senate acquitted him. His final year was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which his administration’s actions and his public statements drew intense criticism and support from different constituencies.
07 / Defeat, conflict, and courts
2020, January 6, and legal exposure
Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden but refused to accept the result, promoting claims of widespread fraud that were rejected in numerous courts and by election officials. On January 6, 2021, after Trump addressed supporters in Washington, a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden’s victory. Trump was impeached a second time, this time for incitement of insurrection, and was again acquitted by the Senate.
After leaving office, Trump remained the central figure in Republican politics. His three Supreme Court appointments helped create a conservative majority that later overturned Roe v. Wade. He also faced civil and criminal investigations and cases involving business records, classified documents, election interference allegations, and defamation litigation.
In 2024, Trump was convicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to a hush-money arrangement, making him the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime. He denied wrongdoing and continued to appeal or contest legal outcomes across cases.
08 / Comeback and present
The 47th presidency
Trump announced another presidential run after the 2022 midterms and quickly reasserted dominance in the Republican Party. The 2024 campaign unfolded amid criminal charges, civil judgments, polarization, and a dramatic assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, in which Trump was wounded in the ear.
He won the 2024 election and returned to office on January 20, 2025, becoming the 47th president and only the second president after Grover Cleveland to serve nonconsecutive terms. His second term has been marked by aggressive executive action, renewed immigration enforcement, tariff and trade actions, energy and environmental reversals, federal bureaucracy changes, and foreign-policy moves.
Ballotpedia’s tracker, updated in May 2026, counted 259 executive orders, 77 memoranda, and 141 proclamations in his second term as of May 6, 2026. Its summary identified foreign policy as the largest executive-order topic category and noted that his first-year second-term total was the highest since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first year in 1933.