Who is Donald Trump?

 Donald Trump

Donald John Trump born June 14, 1946 is an American politician, media personality and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in 1968. He became president of his father's real estate business in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organization. He expanded the company's operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos and golf courses and later started side ventures mostly by licensing his name. From 2004 to 2015, he co-produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions including six bankruptcies.

Trump's political positions have been described as populist protectionist isolationist and nationalist. He won the 2016 United States presidential election as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton despite losing the national popular vote. He became the first U.S. president with no prior military or government service. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. The 2017 2019 special counsel investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to favor the election of Trump. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist and many as misogynistic.

Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim majority countries diverted military funding towards building a wall on the U.S. Mexico border and implemented a policy of family separations for apprehended migrants. He rolled back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations in an aggressive attempt to weaken environmental protections. Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 which cut taxes for individuals and businesses and rescinded the individual health insurance mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act. He appointed 54 federal appellate judges and three United States Supreme Court justices. Trump initiated a trade war with China and withdrew the U.S. from the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong un three times but made no progress on denuclearization. He reacted slowly to the COVID 19 pandemic ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the need for testing.

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede defeat falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results by pressuring government officials mounting scores of unsuccessful legal challenges and obstructing the presidential transition. On January 6, 2021, Trump urged his supporters to march to the United States Capitol which many of them then attacked resulting in multiple deaths and interrupting the electoral vote count.

Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice. After he tried to pressure Ukraine in 2019 to investigate Biden. He was impeached in December by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and acquitted by the Senate in February 2020. The House impeached Trump a second time in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection and the Senate acquitted him in February. Since leaving office Trump has remained heavily involved in the Republican Party including making over 200 political endorsements during the 2022 midterm elections. In November 2022 he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. In December 2022 the House January 6 Committee recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding conspiracy to defraud the United States and inciting or assisting an insurrection. Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history.

Early life

Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946 at Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens in New York City the fourth child of Fred Trump a Bronx born real estate developer whose parents were German immigrants and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump an immigrant from Scotland. Trump grew up with older siblings Maryanne Fred Jr., and Elizabeth and younger brother Robert in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens and attended the private Kew Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, he was enrolled at the New York Military Academy a private boarding school and in 1964, he enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics. In 2015 Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened Trump's colleges, high school and the College Board with legal action if they released Trump's academic records.

While in college Trump obtained four student draft deferments during the Vietnam War era. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination, and in July 1968, a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was classified 1 Y a conditional medical deferment and in 1972. he was reclassified 4 F due to bone spurs permanently disqualifying him from service.

Family

In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. born 1977, Ivanka born 1981 and Eric born 1984. Ivana became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992 following Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples. Trump and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999. They have one daughter tiffany born 1993. Who was raised by Marla in California. In 2005, Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron born 2006. Melania gained U.S. citizenship in 2006.

Religion

Trump went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. In the 1970 his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church in America. The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale ministered to the family until his death in 1993.Trump has described him as a mentor. In 2015, the church stated that Trump was not an active member. In 2019 he appointed his personal pastor televangelist Paula White to the White House Office of Public Liaison. In 2020 he said he identified as a non denominational Christian.

Health habits

Trump has called golfing his "primary form of exercise" but usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy because exercise depletes the body's energy "like a battery with a finite amount of energy." In 2015 Trump's campaign released a letter from his longtime personal physician, Harold Bornstein, stating that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." In 2018, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter, and that three Trump agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on the doctor's office.

Wealth

In 1982, Trump made the initial Forbes list of wealthy people for holding a share of his family's estimated $200 million net worth equivalent to $562 million in 2021.His losses in the 1980s dropped him from the list between 1990 and 1995. After filing the mandatory financial disclosure report with the FEC in July 2015. He announced a net worth of about $10 billion. Records released by the FEC showed at least $1.4 billion in assets and $265 million in liabilities. Forbes estimated his net worth at $4.5 billion in 2015 and $3.1 billion in 2018. In its 2021 billionaires ranking, it was $2.4 billion 1,299th in the world making him one of the wealthiest officeholders in American history.

Journalist Jonathan Greenberg reported in 2018 that Trump using the pseudonym John Barron and claiming to be a Trump Organization official called him in 1984 to falsely assert that he owned in excess of ninety percent of the Trump family's business to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Greenberg also wrote that Forbes had vastly overestimated Trump's wealth and wrongly included him on the Forbes 400 rankings of 1982, 1983 and 1984.