Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, media personality and politician. He was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump was the chairman and president of The Trump Organization. Much of his money was made in real estate in New York City, Las Vegas, and Atlantic City. He used to own the Miss Universe pageant. He was the star in his own reality show The Apprentice. In October 2019, Trump changed the state he officially lived in from New York to Florida.
In June 2015, Trump said that he would run for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election. Starting mid-July, polls showed that Trump was the front-runner for the Republican Party, ahead of Ted Cruz. This was true even after much criticism from his party because of what he said about illegal immigration, Muslims, and ISIS. His campaign was supported by mostly middle-class and rural working class families. It gained opposition from Democrats, some Republicans, business people, some world leaders and the pope.
On May 4, 2016, Trump became the expected Republican Party nominee for president. Trump then was in the general election against Democrat Hillary Clinton (former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady of the United States). He won this election on November 9, 2016, after a close race with Clinton. Each of them needed 270 electoral votes to win. Trump had 304 while Clinton had 227. He was inaugurated as the 45th president on January 20, 2017, at 70 years old.
On September 24, 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that the House of Representatives would start an impeachment inquiry into Trump. On October 31, 2019, the House voted 232–196 to start the impeachment process. On December 16, the House Judiciary Committee released a report saying that criminal bribery and wire fraud was the reason to charge Trump with abuse of power. The house voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, making him the third president in American history to be impeached. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
In November 2020, Trump lost his re-election to former Vice President Joe Biden after the 2020 election. He became the first president since George H. W. Bush in 1992 to lose his re-election. However, he refused to agree with the result and said he won the election by a big amount. He also sued states where Biden won. In January 2021, Trump controversially made a telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the call, he was reported to have tried to change the election results. A few days later, his supporters rioted at the United States Capitol, which killed five people. This caused the United States House of Representatives to impeach Trump again. This made Trump the only president to be impeached twice. The United States Senate voted to acquit him of all charges. Scholars and historians have ranked Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history.
In November 2022, Trump announced another presidential campaign for the 2024 presidential election. In March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump, making him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges. In August 2023, Trump was indicted a second time for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Early life
Donald John Trump was born at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, New York City. He is the son of Fred Trump and his wife Mary Anne (née MacLeod). They married in 1936. His mother was born on the Isle of Lewis, off the west coast of Scotland. Donald was one of five children. Donald's oldest brother, Fred Jr., died in 1981 at the age of 43, due to an alcohol addiction. Trump's sister, Maryanne, is a judge in New York. Trump's father's parents were German immigrants. His grandfather, Frederick Trump, immigrated to the United States in 1885. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1892. Frederick married Elisabeth Christ (October 10, 1880 – June 6, 1966) at Kallstadt, State of Bavaria, Germany, on August 26, 1902. They had three children. He studied at Fordham University until transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. Trump was not drafted during the Vietnam War. This was due to four college deferments and one medical deferment. In an interview with The New York Times, he said his medical deferment was because of heel spurs.