Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman serving as the 47th president of the United States since January 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.
Donald Trump | |
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 Inaugural portrait, 2025 | |
| 45th & 47th President of the United States | |
Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 20, 2025 | |
| Vice President | JD Vance |
| Preceded by | Joe Biden |
| In office January 20, 2017 – January 20, 2021 | |
| Vice President | Mike Pence |
| Preceded by | Barack Obama |
| Succeeded by | Joe Biden |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Donald John Trump June 14, 1946 Queens, New York City, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican (1987–1999, 2009–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
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| Spouses |
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| Children |
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| Parents |
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| Relatives | See Trump family |
| Residence | White House |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BS) |
| Occupation |
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| Cabinet |
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| Awards | List of awards and honors |
| Signature |  |
| Website |
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Born in New York City, Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He became president of his family's real estate business in 1971 and oriented it to luxury hotels and casinos. After a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s, he began side ventures. From 2004 to 2015, hosted the reality television show The Apprentice. A political outsider, Trump won the 2016 presidential election against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
In his first term, Trump imposed a travel ban on citizens from six Muslim-majority countries, expanded the U.S.–Mexico border wall, and implemented a family separation policy. Domestically, he rolled back environmental and business regulations, signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and appointed three Supreme Court justices. In foreign policy, Trump withdrew the U.S. from agreements on climate, trade, and Iran's nuclear program; he negotiated the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement, began a trade war with China, and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without reaching an agreement on denuclearization. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he downplayed its severity, contradicted guidance from public health officials, and enacted the CARES Act stimulus package. Trump was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection; the Senate acquitted him in both cases. After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him one of the worst presidents in American history.
Trump is the central figure of Trumpism movement. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, racist or misogynistic, and he has made false and misleading statements and promoted conspiracy theories to a degree unprecedented in American politics. He lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede, falsely claiming electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results, including through his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021. In 2023, Trump was held liable in civil cases for sexual abuse, defamation, and business fraud, and in 2024 he was found guilty of falsifying business records, making him the first U.S. president convicted of a felony. After his victory in the 2024 presidential election against Kamala Harris, he was sentenced to a penalty-free discharge, and two other felony indictments against him were dismissed.
Trump began his second presidency by implementing a mass deportation program, and starting a trade war with Canada and Mexico.
Early life and education
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He is of German and Scottish descent. He grew up with his older siblings, Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and his younger brother, Robert, in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. Fred Trump paid his children each about $20,000 a year, equivalent to $265,000 a year in 2024. Trump was a millionaire at age eight by contemporary standards.
Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade. He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father's business. His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, to complete secondary school. Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics. He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to bone spurs in his heels.
Business career
Real estate
Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father's real estate company, Trump Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs. In 1971, his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand.Roy Cohn was Trump's fixer, lawyer, and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the U.S. government for $100 million (equivalent to $686 million in 2023) over its charges that Trump's properties had racial discriminatory practices. Trump's counterclaims were dismissed, and the government's case was settled with the Trumps signing a consent decree agreeing to desegregate. Helping Trump projects, Cohn was a consigliere whose Mafia connections controlled construction unions. Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone's services to deal with the federal government. Between 1991 and 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses: the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts company.
In 1992, Trump, his siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and his cousin John W. Walter, each with a 20 percent share, formed All County Building Supply & Maintenance Corp. The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Trump's rental units, then billing those services and supplies to Trump Management with markups of 20–50 percent and more. The owners shared the proceeds generated by the markups. The increased costs were used to get state approval for increasing the rents of his rent-stabilized units.
Manhattan and Chicago developments
Trump attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of his family's first Manhattan venture, the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. The financing was facilitated by a $400 million city property tax abatement arranged for him by his father who also, jointly with Hyatt, guaranteed a $70 million bank construction loan. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and that same year, he obtained rights to develop Trump Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The building houses the headquarters of the Trump Corporation and Trump's PAC and was his primary residence until 2019. In 1988, Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel with a loan from a consortium of 16 banks. The hotel filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992, and a reorganization plan was approved a month later, with the banks taking control of the property.
In 1995, he defaulted on over $3 billion of bank loans, and the lenders seized the Plaza Hotel along with most of his other properties in a "vast and humiliating restructuring" that allowed him to avoid personal bankruptcy. The lead bank's attorney said of the banks' decision that they "all agreed that he'd be better alive than dead". In 1996, Trump acquired and renovated the mostly vacant 71-story skyscraper at 40 Wall Street, later rebranded as the Trump Building. In the early 1990s, he won the right to develop a 70-acre (28 ha) tract in the Lincoln Square neighborhood near the Hudson River. Struggling with debt from other ventures in 1994, he sold most of his interest in the project to Asian investors, who financed the project's completion, Riverside South. Trump's last major construction project was the 92-story mixed-use Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago which opened in 2008. In 2024, The New York Times and ProPublica reported that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating whether he had twice written off losses incurred through construction cost overruns and lagging sales of residential units in the building he had declared to be worthless on his 2008 tax return.
Atlantic City casinos
In 1984, Trump opened Harrah's at Trump Plaza, a hotel and casino, with financing and management help from the Holiday Corporation. It was unprofitable, and he paid Holiday $70 million in May 1986 to take sole control. In 1985, he bought the unopened Atlantic City Hilton Hotel and renamed it Trump Castle. Both casinos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992. Trump bought a third Atlantic City venue in 1988, the Trump Taj Mahal. It was financed with $675 million in junk bonds and completed for $1.1 billion, opening in April 1990. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1991. Under the provisions of the restructuring agreement, he gave up half his initial stake and personally guaranteed future performance. To reduce his $900 million of personal debt, he sold the Trump Shuttle airline; his megayacht, the Trump Princess, which had been leased to his casinos and kept docked; and other businesses. In 1995, Trump founded Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (THCR), which assumed ownership of the Trump Plaza. THCR purchased the Taj Mahal and the Trump Castle in 1996 and went bankrupt in 2004 and 2009, leaving him with 10 percent ownership. He remained chairman until 2009.
Clubs
In 1985, Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1995, he converted the estate into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues. He continued to use a wing of the house as a private residence. He declared the club his primary residence in 2019. He began building and buying golf courses in 1999, owning 17 golf courses by 2016.
Licensing the Trump name
The Trump Organization has licensed the Trump name for consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, learning courses, and home furnishings. According to The Washington Post, there are more than 50 licensing or management deals involving his name, and they have generated at least $59 million for his companies. By 2018, only two consumer goods companies continued to license his name.
Side ventures
In 1970, Trump invested $70,000 to receive billing as coproducer of a Broadway comedy. In September 1983, he purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. After the 1985 season, the league folded, largely due to his attempt to move to a fall schedule (when it would have competed with the National Football League (NFL) for audience) and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit. Trump and his Plaza Hotel hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall. In 1989 and 1990, he lent his name to the Tour de Trump cycling stage race, an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia. From 1986 to 1988, he purchased significant blocks of shares in various public companies while suggesting that he intended to take over the company and then sold his shares for a profit, leading some observers to think he was engaged in greenmail.The New York Times found that he initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions, but "lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously".
In 1988, Trump purchased the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle, financing the purchase with $380 million (equivalent to $979 million in 2023) in loans from a syndicate of 22 banks. He renamed the airline Trump Shuttle and operated it until 1992. He defaulted on his loans in 1991, and ownership passed to the banks. In 1996, he purchased the Miss Universe pageants, including Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. Due to disagreements with CBS about scheduling, he took both pageants to NBC in 2002. In 2007, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work as producer of Miss Universe. NBC and Univision dropped the pageants in June 2015 in reaction to his comments about Mexican immigrants.
In 2005, Trump cofounded Trump University, a company that sold real estate seminars for up to $35,000. After New York State authorities notified the company that its use of "university" violated state law (as it was not an academic institution), its name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010. In 2013, the State of New York filed a $40 million civil suit against Trump University, alleging that the company made false statements and defrauded consumers. Additionally, two class actions were filed in federal court against Trump and his companies. Internal documents revealed that employees were instructed to use a hard-sell approach, and former employees testified that Trump University had defrauded or lied to its students. Shortly after he won the 2016 presidential election, he agreed to pay a total of $25 million to settle the three cases.
Foundation
The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a private foundation established in 1988. From 1987 to 2006, Trump gave his foundation $5.4 million which had been spent by the end of 2006. After donating a total of $65,000 in 2007–2008, he stopped donating any personal funds to the charity, which received millions from other donors, including $5 million from Vince McMahon. The foundation gave to health- and sports-related charities, conservative groups, and charities that held events at Trump properties. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that the charity committed several potential legal and ethical violations, including alleged self-dealing and possible tax evasion. Also in 2016, the New York attorney general determined the foundation to be in violation of state law, for soliciting donations without submitting to required annual external audits, and ordered it to cease its fundraising activities in New York immediately. Trump's team announced in December 2016 that the foundation would be dissolved. In June 2018, the New York attorney general's office filed a civil suit against the foundation, Trump, and his adult children, seeking $2.8 million in restitution and additional penalties. In December 2018, the foundation ceased operation and disbursed its assets to other charities. In November 2019, a New York state judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million to a group of charities for misusing the foundation's funds, in part to finance his presidential campaign.
Legal affairs and bankruptcies
According to a review of state and federal court files conducted by USA Today in 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions. While he has not filed for personal bankruptcy, his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009. They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced his shares in the properties. During the 1980s, more than 70 banks had lent Trump $4 billion. After his corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s, most major banks, with the exception of Deutsche Bank, declined to lend to him. After the January 6 Capitol attack, the bank decided not to do business with him or his company in the future.
Wealth
Trump has often said he began his career with "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest. He borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely did not repay the loans, and received another $413 million (2018 equivalent, adjusted for inflation) from his father's company. Posing as a Trump Organization official named "John Barron", Trump called journalist Jonathan Greenberg in 1984, trying to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Trump self-reported his net worth over a wide range: from a low of minus $900 million in 1990, to a high of $10 billion in 2015. In 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.3 billion and ranked him the 1,438th wealthiest person in the world.
Media career
Trump has produced 19 books under his name, most written or cowritten by ghostwriters. His first book, The Art of the Deal (1987), was a New York Times Best Seller, and was credited by The New Yorker with making Trump famous as an "emblem of the successful tycoon". The book was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, who is credited as a coauthor. Trump had cameos in many films and television shows from 1985 to 2001. Starting in the 1990s, Trump was a guest 24 times on the nationally syndicated Howard Stern Show. He had his own short-form talk radio program, Trumped!, from 2004 to 2008. From 2011 until 2015, he was a guest commentator on Fox & Friends. In 2021, Trump, who had been a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1989, resigned to avoid a disciplinary hearing regarding the January 6 attack. Two days later, the union permanently barred him.
The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice
Producer Mark Burnett made Trump a TV star[90] when he created The Apprentice, which Trump hosted from 2004 to 2015 (including variant The Celebrity Apprentice). On the shows, he was a superrich chief executive who eliminated contestants with the catchphrase "you're fired". The New York Times called his portrayal "a highly flattering, highly fictionalized version" of himself. The shows remade Trump's image for millions of viewers nationwide. With the related licensing agreements, they earned him more than $400 million.
Early political aspirations
Trump registered as a Republican in 1987; a member of the Independence Party, the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party, in 1999; a Democrat in 2001; a Republican in 2009; unaffiliated in 2011; and a Republican in 2012.
In 1987, Trump placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, expressing his views on foreign policy and how to eliminate the federal budget deficit. In 1988, he approached Lee Atwater, asking to be put into consideration to be Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's running mate. Bush found the request "strange and unbelievable". Trump was a candidate in the 2000 Reform Party presidential primaries for three months, but withdrew from the race in February 2000. In 2011, Trump speculated about running against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February and giving speeches in early primary states. In May 2011, he announced he would not run.
2016 presidential election
Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. He became the front-runner in March 2016 and was declared the presumptive Republican nominee in May. His campaign statements were often opaque and suggestive, and a record number were false. He was highly critical of media coverage and frequently made claims of media bias.Hillary Clinton led Trump in national polling averages throughout the campaign, but, in early July, her lead narrowed. In mid-July, he selected Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016. He twice refused to say whether he would accept the result of the election.
Trump described NATO as "obsolete" and espoused views that were described as noninterventionist and protectionist. His campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.–China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and strongly enforcing immigration laws. Other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations, modernizing services for veterans, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. He advocated increasing military spending and extreme vetting or banning of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter debate during the 2016 campaign. He promised to build a wall on the Mexico–U.S. border to restrict illegal movement and vowed that Mexico would pay for it. He pledged to deport millions of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S., and criticized birthright citizenship for incentivizing "anchor babies". According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly, Trump made "explicitly racist appeals to whites" during his 2016 presidential campaign. In particular, his campaign launch speech drew criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists"; in response, NBC fired him from Celebrity Apprentice.
Trump's FEC-required reports listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $315 million. He did not release his tax returns, contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and his promises in 2014 and 2015 to do so if he ran for office. He said his tax returns were being audited, and that his lawyers had advised him against releasing them. After a lengthy court battle to block release of his tax returns and other records to the Manhattan district attorney for a criminal investigation, including two appeals by Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court, in February 2021 the high court allowed the records to be released to the prosecutor for review by a grand jury. In October 2016, portions of Trump's state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times. They show that he had declared a loss of $916 million that year, which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years.
On November 8, 2016, Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton. After elector defections on both sides, the official count was 304 to 227. The fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote, he received nearly 2.9 million fewer votes than Clinton, 46.3% to her 48.25%. He was the only president who neither served in the military nor held any government office prior to becoming president. Trump won 30 states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states which had been considered a blue wall of Democratic strongholds since the 1990s. His victory marked the return of an undivided Republican government—a Republican president combined with Republican control of both chambers of Congress. Trump's victory sparked protests in major U.S. cities.
First presidency (2017–2021)
Early actions
Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. The day after his inauguration, an estimated 2.6 million people worldwide, including a half million in Washington, D.C., protested against him in the Women's Marches. During his first week in office, Trump signed six executive orders, including authorizing procedures for repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, advancement of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects, and planning for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Conflicts of interest
Before being inaugurated, Trump moved his businesses into a revocable trust, rather than a blind trust or equivalent arrangement "to cleanly sever himself from his business interests". He continued to profit from his businesses and knew how his administration's policies affected them. Although he said he would eschew "new foreign deals", the Trump Organization pursued operational expansions in Scotland, Dubai, and the Dominican Republic. Lobbyists, foreign government officials, and Trump donors and allies generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his resorts and hotels. Trump was sued for violating the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the first time that the clauses had been substantively litigated. One case was dismissed in lower court. Two were dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court as moot after his term.
Domestic policy
Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history, which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began. In December 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. It reduced tax rates for businesses and individuals and set the penalty associated with the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate to $0. The Trump administration claimed that the act would not decrease government revenue, but 2018 revenues were 7.6 percent lower than projected. Under Trump, the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent, to nearly $1 trillion in 2019. By the end of his term, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.
Trump is the only modern U.S. president to leave office with a smaller workforce than when he took office, by 3 million people. Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40 percent and reversed Obama-era policies directed at curbing climate change. He withdrew from the Paris Agreement, making the U.S. the only nation to not ratify it. Trump aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels. Natural gas expanded under Trump, but coal continued to decline. He rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations, including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and the use of toxic substances. He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects, and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
Trump dismantled many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment, among others, including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns. During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended, or reversed ninety federal regulations, often "after requests by the regulated industries". The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of his proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation. During his campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In office, he scaled back the Act's implementation through executive orders. He expressed a desire to "let Obamacare fail"; his administration halved the enrollment period and drastically reduced funding for enrollment promotion. In June 2018, the Trump administration joined 18 Republican-led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the Act unconstitutional. Their pleading would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans, but was unsuccessful. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety-net programs. In January 2020, he expressed willingness to consider cuts to them.
In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments, but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. Trump barred organizations that provide abortions or abortion referrals from receiving federal funds. He said he supported "traditional marriage", but considered the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage "settled". His administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration's workplace protections against discrimination of LGBTQ people. His attempted rollback of anti-discrimination protections for transgender patients in August 2020 was halted by a federal judge after a Supreme Court ruling extended employees' civil rights protections to gender identity and sexual orientation. Trump has said he is opposed to gun control, although his views have shifted over time. His administration took an anti-marijuana position, revoking Obama-era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana. Trump is a long-time advocate of capital punishment, and his administration oversaw the federal government execute 13 prisoners, more than in the previous 56 years combined, ending a 17-year moratorium. In 2016, he said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding.
Race relations
Trump's comments on the 2017 Unite the Right rally, condemning "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" and stating that there were "very fine people on both sides", were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters. In a January 2018 discussion of immigration legislation, Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as "shithole countries". His remarks were condemned as racist.
In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen—all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans—should "go back" to the countries they "came from". Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his "racist comments".White nationalist publications and social media praised his remarks, which continued over the following days. He continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign. In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, federal law-enforcement officials controversially removed a largely peaceful crowd of lawful protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. Trump then posed with a Bible for a photo-op at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church, with religious leaders condemning both the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned his proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police-brutality protesters.
Pardons and commutations
Trump granted 237 requests for clemency, fewer than all presidents since 1900 with the exception of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Only 25 of them had been vetted by the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney; the others were granted to people with personal or political connections to him, his family, and his allies, or recommended by celebrities. In his last full day in office, he granted 73 pardons and commuted 70 sentences. Several Trump allies were not eligible for pardons under Justice Department rules, and in other cases the department had opposed clemency. The pardons of three military service members convicted of or charged with violent crimes were opposed by military leaders.
Immigration
As president, Trump described illegal immigration as an "invasion" of the United States and drastically escalated immigration enforcement. He implemented harsh policies against asylum seekers and deployed nearly 6,000 troops the U.S.–Mexico border to stop illegal crossings. He reduced the number of refugees admitted to record lows, from an annual limit of 110,000 before he took office to 15,000 in 2021. Trump also increased restrictions on granting permanent residency to immigrants needing public benefits. One of Trump's central campaign promises was to build a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border; during his first term, the U.S. built 73 miles (117 km) of wall in areas without barriers and 365 miles (587 km) to replace older barriers. In 2018, Trump's refusal to sign any congressional spending bill unless it allocated funding for the border wall resulted in the longest-ever federal government shutdown, for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019. The shutdown ended after Trump agreed to fund the government without any funds for the wall. To avoid another shutdown, Congress passed a funding bill with $1.4 billion for border fencing in February. Trump later declared a national emergency on the southern border to divert $6.1 billion of funding to the border wall despite congressional disagreement.
In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily denied entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. The order caused many protests and legal challenges that resulted in nationwide injunctions.A revised order giving some exceptions was also blocked by courts, but the Supreme Court ruled in June that the ban could be enforced on those lacking "a bona fide relationship with a person or entity" in the U.S. Trump replaced the ban in September with a presidential proclamation extending travel bans to North Koreans, Chadians, and some Venezuelan officials, but excluded Iraq and Sudan. The Supreme Court allowed that version to go into effect in December 2017, and ultimately upheld the ban in 2019. From 2017 to 2018, the Trump administration had a policy of family separation that separated over 4,400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border, an unprecedented policy sparked public outrage in the country. Despite Trump initially blaming Democrats and insisting he could not stop the policy with an executive order, he acceded to public pressure in June 2018 and mandated that migrant families be detained together unless "there is a concern" of risk for the child. A judge later ordered that the families be reunited and further separations stopped except in limited circumstances, though over 1,000 additional children were separated from their families after the order.
Foreign policy
Trump described himself as a "nationalist" and his foreign policy as "America First". He supported populist, neo-nationalist, and authoritarian governments. Unpredictability, uncertainty, and inconsistency characterized foreign relations during his tenure. Tensions between the U.S. and its European allies were strained under Trump. He criticized NATO allies and privately suggested that the U.S. should withdraw from NATO. Trump supported many of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2020, the White House hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize their foreign relations.
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China. The Trump administration weakened the toughest sanctions imposed by the U.S. after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing alleged Russian noncompliance, and supported a potential return of Russia to the G7. Trump repeatedly praised and, according to some critics, rarely criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin but opposed some actions of the Russian government. In 2017, when North Korea's nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as a serious threat, Trump, the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader, met Kim three times: in Singapore in June 2018, in Hanoi in February 2019, and in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in June 2019. However, no denuclearization agreement was reached, and talks in October 2019 broke down after one day.
Personnel
Trump made daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner unpaid advisors.
The Trump administration had a high turnover of personnel, particularly among White House staff. By the end of his first year in office, 34 percent of his original staff had resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. As of early July 2018[update], 61 percent of his senior aides had left and 141 staffers had left in the previous year. Both figures set a record for recent presidents. Notable early departures included National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (after just 25 days), and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Close personal aides to Trump including Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, John McEntee, and Keith Schiller quit or were forced out. Some later returned in different posts. He publicly disparaged several of his former top officials.
Trump had four White House chiefs of staff, marginalizing or pushing out several.Reince Priebus was replaced after seven months by John F. Kelly. Kelly resigned in December 2018 after a tumultuous tenure in which his influence waned, and Trump subsequently disparaged him. Kelly was succeeded by Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff; he was replaced in March 2020 by Mark Meadows. In May 2017, Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey. While initially attributing this action to Comey's conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton's emails, Trump said a few days later that he was concerned with Comey's role in the ongoing Trump-Russia investigations. At a private conversation in February, he said he hoped Comey would drop the investigation into Flynn. In March and April, he asked Comey to "lift the cloud impairing his ability to act" by saying publicly that the FBI was not investigating him.
Trump lost three of his 15 original cabinet members within his first year. Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct. Trump was slow to appoint second-tier officials in the executive branch, saying many of the positions are unnecessary. In October 2017, there were hundreds of sub-cabinet positions without a nominee. By January 8, 2019, of 706 key positions, 433 had been filled and he had no nominee for 264.
Judiciary
Trump appointed 226 Article III judges, including 54 to the courts of appeals and three to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. His Supreme Court nominees were noted as having politically shifted the Court to the right. In the 2016 campaign, he pledged that Roe v. Wade would be overturned "automatically" if he were elected and provided the opportunity to appoint two or three anti-abortion justices. He later took credit when Roe was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization; all three of his Supreme Court nominees voted with the majority. Trump disparaged courts and judges he disagreed with, often in personal terms, and questioned the judiciary's constitutional authority. His attacks on the courts drew rebukes from observers, including sitting federal judges, concerned about the effect of his statements on the judicial independence and public confidence in the judiciary.
COVID-19 pandemic
Trump initially ignored public health warnings and calls for action from health officials within his administration and Azar, focusing on economic and political considerations of the outbreak. Trump established the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 29. Prior to the pandemic, Trump criticized the WHO and other international bodies, which he asserted were taking advantage of U.S. aid. On March 27, he signed into law the CARES Act—a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill—the largest stimulus in U.S. history. In April 2020, Republican-connected groups organized anti-lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic; Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter, although the targeted states did not meet his administration's guidelines for reopening. He repeatedly pressured federal health agencies to take actions he favored, such as approving unproven treatments. On October 2, 2020, he tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID-19, part of a White House outbreak. By July 2020, Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had become a major issue in the presidential election.
Investigations
After he assumed office, Trump was the subject of increasing Justice Department and congressional scrutiny, with investigations covering his election campaign, transition, and inauguration, actions taken during his presidency, his private businesses, personal taxes, and charitable foundation. There were ten federal criminal investigations, eight state and local investigations, and twelve congressional investigations.
In July 2016, the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane, an investigation into possible links between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign. After Trump fired Comey in May 2017, the FBI opened a second investigation into Trump's personal and business dealings with Russia. In January 2017, three U.S. intelligence agencies jointly stated with "high confidence" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to favor Trump. Many suspiciouslinks between Trump associates and Russian officials were discovered. Trump told Russian officials he was unconcerned about Russia's election interference. Crossfire Hurricane was later transferred to Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation; the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia was ended by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after he told the FBI that Mueller would pursue the matter. At the request of Rosenstein, the Mueller investigation examined criminal matters "in connection with Russia's 2016 election interference". Mueller submitted his final report in March 2019. The report found that Russia did interfere in 2016 to favor Trump and that Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged the effort, but that the evidence "did not establish" that Trump campaign members conspired or coordinated with Russia. Trump claimed the report exonerated him despite Mueller writing that it did not. The report also detailed potential obstruction of justice by Trump but "did not draw ultimate conclusions" and left the decision to charge the laws to Congress.
In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump's banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, and his accounting firm, Mazars USA. He sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chair Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures. In May, two judges ruled that both Mazars and the banks must comply with the subpoenas; Trump's attorneys appealed. In September 2022, Trump and the committee agreed to a settlement regarding Mazars, and the firm began turning over documents.
Impeachments
Trump was impeached twice. The first time, he was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of justice for pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, in an attempt to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election. The Senate acquitted him of both charges on February 5, 2020, with Senator Mitt Romney the only Republican voting to convict him one of the charges. Trump was impeached a second time on January 13, 2021, for incitement of insurrection leading to the Capitol riot. After Trump had left office on January 20, he was acquitted on February 13 when the Senate voted 57–43 to convict, ten votes short of the two-thirds majority required. Seven Republicans voted to convict, which was the most bipartisan support in any Senate impeachment trial of a president or former president.
2020 presidential election
Presidential campaign
Trump filed to run for re-election only a few hours after becoming president in 2017. He held his first re-election rally less than a month after taking office and officially became the Republican nominee in August 2020. Trump's campaign focused on crime, claiming that cities would descend into lawlessness if Democratic nominee Joe Biden won. He repeatedly misrepresented Biden's positions and appealed to racism. Starting in early 2020, Trump sowed doubts about the election, claiming without evidence that it would be rigged and that widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud. He blocked funding for the U.S. Postal Service, saying he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail. He repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the results if he lost and commit to a peaceful transition of power.
Loss to Biden and rejection of results
Biden won the November 2020 election, receiving 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232. The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. Even before the results were known on the morning after the election, Trump declared victory. Days later, when Biden was projected the winner, Trump baselessly alleged election fraud. As part of an effort to overturn the results, Trump and his allies filed many legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by at least 86 judges in both state and federal courts for having no factual or legal basis.
Trump's allegations were also refuted by state election officials, and the Supreme Court declined to hear a case asking it to overturn the results in four states won by Biden. Trump repeatedly sought help to overturn the results, personally pressuring Republican local and state office-holders, Republican legislators, the Justice Department, and Vice President Pence, urging various actions such as replacing presidential electors, or requesting that Georgia officials "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result.
In the weeks after the election, Trump withdrew from public activities. He initially blocked government officials from cooperating in Biden's presidential transition. After three weeks, the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team. While Trump said he recommended that the GSA begin transition protocols, he still did not formally concede. Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration on January 20.
January 6 Capitol attack
In December 2020, reports emerged that the U.S. military was on "red alert," and ranking officers had discussed what to do if Trump declared martial law.Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel grew concerned that Trump would attempt a coup or military action against China or Iran. Milley insisted that he be consulted about any military orders from Trump, including the use of nuclear weapons.
At noon on January 6, 2021, while Congress was certifying the presidential election results at the U.S. Capitol Trump held a rally at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where he called for the election to be overturned and urged his supporters to "fight like hell" and "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol. His supporters then formed a mob that broke into the building, disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. During the attack, Trump posted on social media but did not ask the rioters to disperse until 6 p.m., when he told them in a Tweet to "go home with love & in peace" while calling them "great patriots" and restating that he had won the election. Congress later reconvened and confirmed Biden's victory in the early hours of January 7. More than 140 police officers were injured, and five people died either during or after the attack. The event has been described as an attempted self-coup by Trump.
Between terms (2021–2025)
Upon leaving the White House, Trump began living at Mar-a-Lago, establishing an office there as provided for by the Former Presidents Act. Trump's continuing false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the "big lie" by his critics, although in May 2021, with his supporters he began using the term to refer to the election itself. The Republican Party used his election narrative to justify imposing new voting restrictions in its favor. As of July 2022, he continued to pressure state legislators to overturn the election. Unlike other former presidents, Trump continued to dominate his party; a 2022 profile in The New York Times described him as a modern party boss. He continued fundraising, raising a war chest containing more than twice that of the Republican Party, and profited from fundraisers many Republican candidates held at Mar-a-Lago. Much of his focus was on party governance and installing in key posts officials loyal to him. In the 2022 midterm elections, he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices. In February 2021, Trump registered a new company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), for providing "social networking services" to U.S. customers. In March 2024, TMTG merged with special-purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition and became a public company. In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a social media platform.
In 2019, journalist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s and sued him for defamation over his denial. Carroll sued Trump again in 2022 for battery and more defamation. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered to pay $5 million in one case and $83.3 million in the other. In 2022, New York filed a civil lawsuit was filed against Trump accusing him of inflating The Trump Organization's value to gain an advantage with lenders and banks; Trump was found liable and ordered to pay $350 million plus interest.
In connection with Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his involvement in the January 6 attack, in December 2022 the U.S. House committee on the attack recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and inciting or assisting an insurrection. In August 2023, a Trump was indicted on 13 charges, including racketeering, by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election in the state.
In January 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents Trump had taken to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, some of which were classified. In the ensuing Justice Department investigation, officials retrieved more classified documents from Trump's lawyers. On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago for illegally held documents, including those in breach of the Espionage Act, collecting 11 sets of classified documents, some marked top secret. A federal grand jury constituted by Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in June 2023 on 31 counts of "willfully retaining national defense information" under the Espionage Act, among other charges. Trump pleaded not guilty. In July 2024, judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, ruling Smith's appointment as special prosecutor was unconstitutional.
In May 2024, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case stemmed from evidence that Trump booked Michael Cohen's hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels as business expenses to cover up his alleged 2006–2007 affair with Daniels during the 2016 election. On January 10, 2025, the judge gave Trump a no-penalty sentence known as an unconditional discharge, saying that punitive requirements would have interfered with presidential immunity. After Trump's re-election, the 2020 election obstruction case and the classified documents case were dismissed without prejudice due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
2024 presidential election
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election and set up a fundraising account. In March 2023, the campaign began diverting 10 percent of the donations to his leadership PAC. His campaign had paid $100 million towards his legal bills by March 2024. In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump disqualified for the Colorado Republican primary for his role in inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress. In March 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court restored his name to the ballot in a unanimous decision, ruling that Colorado lacks the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding federal office.
During the campaign, Trump made increasingly violent and authoritarian statements. He also said that he would weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department against his political opponents and use the military to go after Democratic politicians and those that do not support his candidacy. He used harsher, more dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric than during his presidency. His harsher rhetoric against his political enemies has been described by some historians and scholars as authoritarian, fascist, and unlike anything a political candidate has ever said in American history.Age and health concerns also arose during the campaign, with several medical experts highlighting an increase in rambling, tangential speech and behavioral disinhibition.
Trump mentioned "rigged election" and "election interference" earlier and more frequently than in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and refused to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. Analysts for The New York Times described this as an intensification of his "heads I win; tails you cheated" rhetorical strategy; the paper said the claim of a rigged election had become the backbone of the campaign.
On July 13, 2024, Trump was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler Township, Pennsylvania. Two days later, the 2024 Republican National Convention nominated him as their presidential candidate, with Senator JD Vance as his running mate. In September, he was targeted in another assassination attempt in Florida.
Trump won the election in November 2024 with 312 electoral votes to incumbent vice president Kamala Harris's 226, making him the second president in U.S. history after Grover Cleveland in 1892 to be elected to a non-consecutive second term. He also won the popular vote with 49.8% to Harris's 48.3%. Trump's victory in 2024 was part of a global backlash against incumbent parties, in part due to the 2021–2023 inflation surge. Several outlets described his re-election as an extraordinary comeback.
Second presidency (2025–present)
Trump began his second term when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2025. He is the oldest individual to assume the presidency, and the first president with a felony conviction.
Early actions
Upon taking office, Trump signed a series of executive orders, described as a "shock and awe" campaign, that tested the limits of executive authority, with many drawing immediate legal challenges. He issued more executive orders on his first day than any other president. Four days into Trump's second term, analysis conducted by Time found that nearly two-thirds of his executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025. He pardoned around 1,500 January 6 rioters, including those who violently attacked police, and commuted the sentences of 14. In his first weeks, several of Trump's actions ignored or violated federal laws, regulations, and the Constitution.
Mass firings of federal employees and hiring freezes
Trump implemented a hiring freeze across the federal government, ordered telework of federal employees to be discontinued within 30 days, and the at-will Schedule Policy/Career classification of employees was created. Trump initiated mass firings of employees, many described as unprecedented or in violation of federal law, with the intent of replacing them with workers more aligned with Trump's agenda. Trump ordered an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) projects in the federal government and placed employees in DEI offices on leave. He rescinded Executive Order 11246, which mandated affirmative action and nondiscrimination practices for federal contractors.
Domestic policy
Trump appointed oil, gas, and chemical lobbyists to the EPA to reverse climate regulations and pollution controls. He declared a national energy emergency, allowing for the suspension of some environmental regulations and faster approvals of energy projects, and pushed back on the development of renewable energy sources. Trump initiated a review of the "legality and continued applicability" of the EPA endangerment finding, which is the basis of most federal regulations on greenhouse gases. Trump again withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.
Trump frequently blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion and "wokeness" for problems in government and society, and equated diversity with incompetence. He repealed and reversed civil rights protections and anti-discrimination policies in the federal government.
Immigration
In his first days in office, Trump enacted far-reaching measures targeting illegal immigration. He instructed border patrol agents to summarily deport migrants crossing the border illegally, disabled the CBP One app that was being used to schedule border crossings, resumed remain in Mexico, labeled cartels as terrorist groups, deployed troops to the southern border, and renewed construction of a southern border wall.
Trump enacted a mass deportation operation, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reaching over 1000 daily arrests one week into his presidency, and a goal of reaching 1,200 to 1,500 daily arrests. Trump initially focused deportation operations in sanctuary cities and against individuals on "target lists" of criminals formed prior to the Trump administration. Removals were also expedited for asylum applicants who failed to meet requirements. Trump also suspended refugee processing for four months and revoked the parole status of migrants who entered the U.S. under CBP One and CHNV humanitarian parole. Trump attempted to remove birthright citizenship. On January 29, 2025, Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law.
Foreign policy
Trump's second term foreign policy was described as imperialist and expansionist. Trump ordered the U.S. Government to stop funding and working with the WHO and announced the U.S.'s intention to formally leave the WHO. Trump and his incoming administration helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas alongside the Biden administration, enacted a day prior to Trump's inauguration.
Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, beginning with a threat against Columbia to allow deportation flights in January, and a trade war with Canada and Mexico later in February.
During the state visit of Netanyahu to Washington on February 4, Trump declared that the United States could take over the Gaza Strip after Palestinians were removed and relocated in order to convert the area into what he called "the Riviera of the Middle East".
Personnel
On February 3, 2025, the White House said that Elon Musk was a special government employee. Trump gave Musk's Department of Government Efficiency—which is not a federal department—access to many federal government agencies. Musk teams operated in eleven agencies by early February including the Treasury Department's $5 trillion payment system,Small Business Administration, Office of Personnel Management, and the General Services Administration. Trump and Musk dismantled most of USAID.
Political practice and rhetoric
Beginning with his 2016 campaign, Trump's politics and rhetoric led to the creation of a political movement known as Trumpism. Trump's political positions are populist,[530] more specifically described as right-wing populist. He helped bring far-right fringe ideas and organizations into the mainstream. Many of Trump's actions and rhetoric have been described as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding. His political base has been compared to a cult of personality.
Trump's rhetoric and actions inflame anger and exacerbate distrust through an "us" versus "them" narrative.[544] Trump explicitly and routinely disparages racial, religious, and ethnic minorities,[545] and scholars consistently find that racial animus regarding blacks, immigrants, and Muslims are the best predictors of support for Trump.[546] Trump's rhetoric has been described as using fearmongering and demagogy. The alt-right movement coalesced around and supported his candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. He has a strong appeal to evangelical Christian voters and Christian nationalists, and his rallies take on the symbols, rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism.
Racial and gender views
Many of Trump's comments and actions have been described as racist. In national polling, about half of respondents said that he is racist; a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists. Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled his political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters. Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump. He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of five black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated in 2002 when the actual rapist confessed and his DNA matched the evidence. In 2024, the men sued Trump for defamation after he said in a televised debate that they had committed the crime and killed the woman.
In 2011, when he was reportedly considering a presidential run, Trump became the leading proponent of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory, alleging that Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, was not born in the U.S. In April, he claimed credit for pressuring the White House to publish the "long-form" birth certificate, which he considered fraudulent, and later said this made him "very popular". In September 2016, amid pressure, he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S. In 2017, he reportedly expressed birther views privately. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump made false attacks against the racial identity of his opponent, Kamala Harris, that were described as reminiscent of the birther conspiracy theory.
Trump has a history of belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media. He made lewd comments, disparaged women's physical appearances, and referred to them using derogatory epithets. At least 25 women publicly accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape, kissing without consent, groping, looking under women's skirts, and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. He has denied the allegations. In October 2016, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which Trump bragged about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying that, "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy." Trump characterized the comments as "locker-room talk", and the incident's widespread media exposure led to Trump's first public apology during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Link to violence and hate crimes
Trump has been identified as a key figure in increasing political violence in America, both for and against him. He is described as embracing extremism, conspiracy theories such as Q-Anon, and far-right militia movements to a greater extent than any modern American president, and engaging in stochastic terrorism.
Research suggests Trump's rhetoric is associated with an increased incidence of hate crimes, and that he has an emboldening effect on expressing prejudicial attitudes due to his normalization of explicit racial rhetoric. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes, including participants in the storming of the U.S. Capitol, cited his rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive leniency. A nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which he was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence mostly by white men and primarily against minorities. Trump's normalization and revisionist history of the January 6 Capitol attack and grant of clemency to all January 6 rioters was described by counterterrorism researchers as encouraging future political violence.
Conspiracy theories
Before and throughout his presidency, Trump promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including Obama birtherism, the Clinton body count conspiracy theory, the conspiracy theory movement QAnon, the Global warming hoax theory, Trump Tower wiretapping allegations, that Osama bin Laden was alive and Obama and Biden had members of Navy SEAL Team 6 killed, and alleged Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections. In at least two instances, Trump clarified to press that he believed the conspiracy theory in question. During and since the 2020 presidential election, Trump promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat that were characterized as "the big lie".
Truthfulness
As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently makes false statements in public remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics. His falsehoods are a distinctive part of his political identity and have been described as firehosing. His false and misleading statements were documented by fact-checkers, including at The Washington Post, which tallied 30,573 false or misleading statements made by him during his first presidency, increasing in frequency over time.
Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, such as his repeated claim of the "biggest inaugural crowd ever". Others had more far-reaching effects, such as his promotion of antimalarial drugs as an unproven treatment for COVID-19, causing a U.S. shortage of these drugs and panic-buying in Africa and South Asia. Other misinformation, such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the "spread of radical Islamic terror", served his domestic political purposes. His attacks on mail-in ballots and other election practices weakened public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it. Trump habitually does not apologize for his falsehoods. Until 2018, the media rarely referred to Trump's falsehoods as lies, including when he repeated demonstrably false statements.
Social media
Trump's social media presence attracted worldwide attention after he joined Twitter in 2009. He tweeted frequently during his 2016 campaign and as president until Twitter banned him after the January 6 attack. He often used Twitter to communicate directly with the public and sideline the press. In June 2017, the White House press secretary said that his tweets were official presidential statements.
After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checks in May 2020. In response, he tweeted that social media platforms "totally silence" conservatives and that he would "strongly regulate, or close them down". In the days after the storming of the Capitol, he was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. The loss of his social media presence diminished his ability to shape events and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter. In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following.Elon Musk, after acquiring Twitter, reinstated his Twitter account in November 2022.Meta Platforms' two-year ban lapsed in January 2023, allowing him to return to Facebook and Instagram, although in 2024, he continued to call the company an "enemy of the people". In January 2025, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit filed by Trump over his suspension.
Relationship with the press
Trump sought media attention throughout his career, sustaining a "love-hate" relationship with the press. In the 2016 campaign, he benefited from a record amount of free media coverage.The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that his media dominance enthralled the public and created "must-see TV". As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people". In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl said that he had privately told her that he intentionally discredited the media "so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you".
The first Trump presidency reduced formal press briefings from about a hundred in 2017 to about half that in 2018 and to two in 2019; they also revoked the press passes of two White House reporters, which were restored by the courts. Trump's 2020 presidential campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about Trump's stance on Russian election interference. All the suits were dismissed. The Atlantic characterized the suits as an intimidation tactic. By 2024, he repeatedly voiced support for outlawing political dissent and criticism, and said that reporters should be prosecuted for not divulging confidential sources and media companies should possibly lose their broadcast licenses for unfavorable coverage of him. In 2024, Trump sued ABC News for defamation after George Stephanopoulos said on-air that a jury had found him civilly liable for raping E. Jean Carroll. The case was settled in December with ABC's parent company, Walt Disney, apologizing for the inaccurate claims about Trump and agreeing to donate $15 million to Trump's future presidential library.
Personal life
Family
In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. (b. 1977), Ivanka (b. 1981), and Eric (b. 1984). The couple divorced in 1990, following his affair with model and actress Marla Maples. He and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999. They have one daughter, Tiffany (b. 1993), whom Maples raised in California. In 2005, he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (b. 2006).
Health
Trump says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs. He sleeps about four or five hours a night. Trump has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", but usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy because he believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy", which is depleted by exercise. In 2015, his campaign released a letter from his longtime personal physician, Harold Bornstein, stating that he 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 of Trump's agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on Bornstein's office.
Religion
Donald Trump declared that he was a Presbyterian and a Protestant in 2016, though in 2020, he began to identify as a nondenominational Christian.
Assessments
Public image
A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U.S. leadership between 2016 and 2017 found that Trump led Obama in job approval in 29 countries, most of them non-democracies; approval of U.S. leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries. By mid-2020, 16 percent of international respondents to a 13-nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in him, lower than China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
During his first presidency, research from 2020 found that Trump had a stronger impact on popular assessments towards American political parties and partisan opinions than any president since the Truman administration. In 2021, Trump was identified as the only president never to reach a 50 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, which dates to 1938, partially due to a record-high partisan gap in his approval ratings: 88 percent among Republicans and 7 percent among Democrats. His early ratings were unusually stable, ranging between 35 and 49 percent. He finished his term with a rating between 29 and 34 percent—the lowest of any president since modern polling began—and a record-low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency.
In Gallup's annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most, he placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018, tied with Obama for first in 2019, and placed first in 2020. Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1946, he was the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office.
According to Gallup, Trump began his second term with an approval rating of 47% and a disapproval rating of 48%. Trump's approval rating was extremely politically polarized, being approved by 91% of Republicans, 46% of independents, and 6% of Democrats.
Scholarly rankings
In the C-SPAN "Presidential Historians Survey 2021",historians ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president. He rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills. The Siena College Research Institute's 2022 survey ranked him 43rd out of 45 presidents. He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck, willingness to take risks, and party leadership, and he ranked last in several categories. In 2018 and 2024, surveys of members of the American Political Science Association ranked him the worst president.
See also
- Awards and honors received by Donald Trump
Notes
- Beginning when Trump was three years old, his father gave each of his children $6,000 every year, the maximum allowed without incurring a gift tax. To avoid taxes, Fred made them landlords of two of his housing developments, paying each $13,928 in rent every year.
- Trump acknowledged a negative net worth in 1990 of minus $900 million in his book The Art of the Comeback.Timothy L. O'Brien explains in his book TrumpNation that Forbes dropped Trump from its list of wealthiest Americans from 1990–1995. Not until 1997 did Forbes acknowledge Trump's 1990 negative net worth of minus $900 million.
- Presidential elections in the U.S. are decided by the Electoral College. Each state names a number of electors equal to its representation in Congress and (in most states) all electors vote for the winner of their state's popular vote.
- Attributed to multiple sources:[399]
- Attributed to multiple sources:
- Attributed to multiple sources:[537][538][541][542]
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Donald John Trump born June 14 1946 is an American politician media personality and businessman serving as the 47th president of the United States since January 2025 A member of the Republican Party he previously served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021 Donald TrumpInaugural portrait 202545th amp 47th President of the United StatesIncumbentAssumed office January 20 2025Vice PresidentJD VancePreceded byJoe BidenIn office January 20 2017 January 20 2021Vice PresidentMike PencePreceded byBarack ObamaSucceeded byJoe BidenPersonal detailsBornDonald John Trump 1946 06 14 June 14 1946 age 78 Queens New York City U S Political partyRepublican 1987 1999 2009 present Other political affiliationsReform 1999 2001 Democratic 2001 2009 Independent 2011 2012 SpousesIvana Zelnickova m 1977 div 1990 wbr Marla Maples m 1993 div 1999 wbr Melania Knauss m 2005 wbr ChildrenDonald Jr IvankaEricTiffanyBarronParentsFred TrumpMary Anne MacLeodRelativesSee Trump familyResidenceWhite HouseEducationUniversity of Pennsylvania BS OccupationPoliticianbusinessmanmedia personalityCabinetFirstSecondAwardsList of awards and honorsSignatureWebsitePresidential libraryWhite House websiteWhite House archivesDonald Trump s voice source source track Trump on the WHO s declaration of COVID 19 as a global pandemic Recorded March 11 2020 Born in New York City Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor s degree in economics He became president of his family s real estate business in 1971 and oriented it to luxury hotels and casinos After a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s he began side ventures From 2004 to 2015 hosted the reality television show The Apprentice A political outsider Trump won the 2016 presidential election against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton In his first term Trump imposed a travel ban on citizens from six Muslim majority countries expanded the U S Mexico border wall and implemented a family separation policy Domestically he rolled back environmental and business regulations signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and appointed three Supreme Court justices In foreign policy Trump withdrew the U S from agreements on climate trade and Iran s nuclear program he negotiated the U S Mexico Canada Agreement began a trade war with China and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without reaching an agreement on denuclearization In response to the COVID 19 pandemic he downplayed its severity contradicted guidance from public health officials and enacted the CARES Act stimulus package Trump was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection the Senate acquitted him in both cases After his first term scholars and historians ranked him one of the worst presidents in American history Trump is the central figure of Trumpism movement Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged racist or misogynistic and he has made false and misleading statements and promoted conspiracy theories to a degree unprecedented in American politics He lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede falsely claiming electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results including through his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021 In 2023 Trump was held liable in civil cases for sexual abuse defamation and business fraud and in 2024 he was found guilty of falsifying business records making him the first U S president convicted of a felony After his victory in the 2024 presidential election against Kamala Harris he was sentenced to a penalty free discharge and two other felony indictments against him were dismissed Trump began his second presidency by implementing a mass deportation program and starting a trade war with Canada and Mexico Early life and educationTrump at New York Military Academy 1964 Donald John Trump was born on June 14 1946 at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump He is of German and Scottish descent He grew up with his older siblings Maryanne Fred Jr and Elizabeth and his younger brother Robert in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens Fred Trump paid his children each about 20 000 a year equivalent to 265 000 a year in 2024 Trump was a millionaire at age eight by contemporary standards Trump attended the private Kew Forest School through seventh grade He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father s business His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy a private boarding school to complete secondary school Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University Two years later he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to bone spurs in his heels Business careerReal estate Starting in 1968 Trump was employed at his father s real estate company Trump Management which owned racially segregated middle class rental housing in New York City s outer boroughs In 1971 his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand Roy Cohn was Trump s fixer lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s In 1973 Cohn helped Trump countersue the U S government for 100 million equivalent to 686 million in 2023 over its charges that Trump s properties had racial discriminatory practices Trump s counterclaims were dismissed and the government s case was settled with the Trumps signing a consent decree agreeing to desegregate Helping Trump projects Cohn was a consigliere whose Mafia connections controlled construction unions Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump who enlisted Stone s services to deal with the federal government Between 1991 and 2009 he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan the casinos in Atlantic City New Jersey and the Trump Hotels amp Casino Resorts company In 1992 Trump his siblings Maryanne Elizabeth and Robert and his cousin John W Walter each with a 20 percent share formed All County Building Supply amp Maintenance Corp The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Trump s rental units then billing those services and supplies to Trump Management with markups of 20 50 percent and more The owners shared the proceeds generated by the markups The increased costs were used to get state approval for increasing the rents of his rent stabilized units Manhattan and Chicago developments Trump in 1985 with a model of one of his aborted Manhattan development projects Trump attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of his family s first Manhattan venture the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel adjacent to Grand Central Terminal The financing was facilitated by a 400 million city property tax abatement arranged for him by his father who also jointly with Hyatt guaranteed a 70 million bank construction loan The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel and that same year he obtained rights to develop Trump Tower a mixed use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan The building houses the headquarters of the Trump Corporation and Trump s PAC and was his primary residence until 2019 In 1988 Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel with a loan from a consortium of 16 banks The hotel filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992 and a reorganization plan was approved a month later with the banks taking control of the property In 1995 he defaulted on over 3 billion of bank loans and the lenders seized the Plaza Hotel along with most of his other properties in a vast and humiliating restructuring that allowed him to avoid personal bankruptcy The lead bank s attorney said of the banks decision that they all agreed that he d be better alive than dead In 1996 Trump acquired and renovated the mostly vacant 71 story skyscraper at 40 Wall Street later rebranded as the Trump Building In the early 1990s he won the right to develop a 70 acre 28 ha tract in the Lincoln Square neighborhood near the Hudson River Struggling with debt from other ventures in 1994 he sold most of his interest in the project to Asian investors who financed the project s completion Riverside South Trump s last major construction project was the 92 story mixed use Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago which opened in 2008 In 2024 The New York Times and ProPublica reported that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating whether he had twice written off losses incurred through construction cost overruns and lagging sales of residential units in the building he had declared to be worthless on his 2008 tax return Atlantic City casinos Entrance of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City In 1984 Trump opened Harrah s at Trump Plaza a hotel and casino with financing and management help from the Holiday Corporation It was unprofitable and he paid Holiday 70 million in May 1986 to take sole control In 1985 he bought the unopened Atlantic City Hilton Hotel and renamed it Trump Castle Both casinos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992 Trump bought a third Atlantic City venue in 1988 the Trump Taj Mahal It was financed with 675 million in junk bonds and completed for 1 1 billion opening in April 1990 He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1991 Under the provisions of the restructuring agreement he gave up half his initial stake and personally guaranteed future performance To reduce his 900 million of personal debt he sold the Trump Shuttle airline his megayacht the Trump Princess which had been leased to his casinos and kept docked and other businesses In 1995 Trump founded Trump Hotels amp Casino Resorts THCR which assumed ownership of the Trump Plaza THCR purchased the Taj Mahal and the Trump Castle in 1996 and went bankrupt in 2004 and 2009 leaving him with 10 percent ownership He remained chairman until 2009 Clubs In 1985 Trump acquired the Mar a Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida In 1995 he converted the estate into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues He continued to use a wing of the house as a private residence He declared the club his primary residence in 2019 He began building and buying golf courses in 1999 owning 17 golf courses by 2016 Licensing the Trump name The Trump Organization has licensed the Trump name for consumer products and services including foodstuffs apparel learning courses and home furnishings According to The Washington Post there are more than 50 licensing or management deals involving his name and they have generated at least 59 million for his companies By 2018 only two consumer goods companies continued to license his name Side ventures Trump and New Jersey Generals quarterback Doug Flutie at a 1985 press conference in Trump Tower In 1970 Trump invested 70 000 to receive billing as coproducer of a Broadway comedy In September 1983 he purchased the New Jersey Generals a team in the United States Football League After the 1985 season the league folded largely due to his attempt to move to a fall schedule when it would have competed with the National Football League NFL for audience and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit Trump and his Plaza Hotel hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall In 1989 and 1990 he lent his name to the Tour de Trump cycling stage race an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d Italia From 1986 to 1988 he purchased significant blocks of shares in various public companies while suggesting that he intended to take over the company and then sold his shares for a profit leading some observers to think he was engaged in greenmail The New York Times found that he initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions but lost most if not all of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously Trump s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame In 1988 Trump purchased the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle financing the purchase with 380 million equivalent to 979 million in 2023 in loans from a syndicate of 22 banks He renamed the airline Trump Shuttle and operated it until 1992 He defaulted on his loans in 1991 and ownership passed to the banks In 1996 he purchased the Miss Universe pageants including Miss USA and Miss Teen USA Due to disagreements with CBS about scheduling he took both pageants to NBC in 2002 In 2007 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work as producer of Miss Universe NBC and Univision dropped the pageants in June 2015 in reaction to his comments about Mexican immigrants In 2005 Trump cofounded Trump University a company that sold real estate seminars for up to 35 000 After New York State authorities notified the company that its use of university violated state law as it was not an academic institution its name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010 In 2013 the State of New York filed a 40 million civil suit against Trump University alleging that the company made false statements and defrauded consumers Additionally two class actions were filed in federal court against Trump and his companies Internal documents revealed that employees were instructed to use a hard sell approach and former employees testified that Trump University had defrauded or lied to its students Shortly after he won the 2016 presidential election he agreed to pay a total of 25 million to settle the three cases Foundation The Donald J Trump Foundation was a private foundation established in 1988 From 1987 to 2006 Trump gave his foundation 5 4 million which had been spent by the end of 2006 After donating a total of 65 000 in 2007 2008 he stopped donating any personal funds to the charity which received millions from other donors including 5 million from Vince McMahon The foundation gave to health and sports related charities conservative groups and charities that held events at Trump properties In 2016 The Washington Post reported that the charity committed several potential legal and ethical violations including alleged self dealing and possible tax evasion Also in 2016 the New York attorney general determined the foundation to be in violation of state law for soliciting donations without submitting to required annual external audits and ordered it to cease its fundraising activities in New York immediately Trump s team announced in December 2016 that the foundation would be dissolved In June 2018 the New York attorney general s office filed a civil suit against the foundation Trump and his adult children seeking 2 8 million in restitution and additional penalties In December 2018 the foundation ceased operation and disbursed its assets to other charities In November 2019 a New York state judge ordered Trump to pay 2 million to a group of charities for misusing the foundation s funds in part to finance his presidential campaign Legal affairs and bankruptcies According to a review of state and federal court files conducted by USA Today in 2018 Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4 000 state and federal legal actions While he has not filed for personal bankruptcy his over leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009 They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced his shares in the properties During the 1980s more than 70 banks had lent Trump 4 billion After his corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s most major banks with the exception of Deutsche Bank declined to lend to him After the January 6 Capitol attack the bank decided not to do business with him or his company in the future Wealth Trump rightmost and wife Ivana at a 1985 state dinner for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan Trump has often said he began his career with a small loan of a million dollars from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest He borrowed at least 60 million from his father largely did not repay the loans and received another 413 million 2018 equivalent adjusted for inflation from his father s company Posing as a Trump Organization official named John Barron Trump called journalist Jonathan Greenberg in 1984 trying to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans Trump self reported his net worth over a wide range from a low of minus 900 million in 1990 to a high of 10 billion in 2015 In 2024 Forbes estimated his net worth at 2 3 billion and ranked him the 1 438th wealthiest person in the world Media careerTrump has produced 19 books under his name most written or cowritten by ghostwriters His first book The Art of the Deal 1987 was a New York Times Best Seller and was credited by The New Yorker with making Trump famous as an emblem of the successful tycoon The book was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz who is credited as a coauthor Trump had cameos in many films and television shows from 1985 to 2001 Starting in the 1990s Trump was a guest 24 times on the nationally syndicated Howard Stern Show He had his own short form talk radio program Trumped from 2004 to 2008 From 2011 until 2015 he was a guest commentator on Fox amp Friends In 2021 Trump who had been a member of SAG AFTRA since 1989 resigned to avoid a disciplinary hearing regarding the January 6 attack Two days later the union permanently barred him The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice Producer Mark Burnett made Trump a TV star 90 when he created The Apprentice which Trump hosted from 2004 to 2015 including variant The Celebrity Apprentice On the shows he was a superrich chief executive who eliminated contestants with the catchphrase you re fired The New York Times called his portrayal a highly flattering highly fictionalized version of himself The shows remade Trump s image for millions of viewers nationwide With the related licensing agreements they earned him more than 400 million Early political aspirationsTrump registered as a Republican in 1987 a member of the Independence Party the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party in 1999 a Democrat in 2001 a Republican in 2009 unaffiliated in 2011 and a Republican in 2012 Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 In 1987 Trump placed full page advertisements in three major newspapers expressing his views on foreign policy and how to eliminate the federal budget deficit In 1988 he approached Lee Atwater asking to be put into consideration to be Republican nominee George H W Bush s running mate Bush found the request strange and unbelievable Trump was a candidate in the 2000 Reform Party presidential primaries for three months but withdrew from the race in February 2000 In 2011 Trump speculated about running against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC in February and giving speeches in early primary states In May 2011 he announced he would not run 2016 presidential electionTrump announced his candidacy in June 2015 He became the front runner in March 2016 and was declared the presumptive Republican nominee in May His campaign statements were often opaque and suggestive and a record number were false He was highly critical of media coverage and frequently made claims of media bias Hillary Clinton led Trump in national polling averages throughout the campaign but in early July her lead narrowed In mid July he selected Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016 He twice refused to say whether he would accept the result of the election Trump campaigning in Arizona March 2016 Trump described NATO as obsolete and espoused views that were described as noninterventionist and protectionist His campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U S China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and strongly enforcing immigration laws Other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations modernizing services for veterans repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act abolishing Common Core education standards investing in infrastructure simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs He advocated increasing military spending and extreme vetting or banning of immigrants from Muslim majority countries Trump s proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter debate during the 2016 campaign He promised to build a wall on the Mexico U S border to restrict illegal movement and vowed that Mexico would pay for it He pledged to deport millions of illegal immigrants residing in the U S and criticized birthright citizenship for incentivizing anchor babies According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly Trump made explicitly racist appeals to whites during his 2016 presidential campaign In particular his campaign launch speech drew criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were bringing drugs they re bringing crime they re rapists in response NBC fired him from Celebrity Apprentice Trump s FEC required reports listed assets above 1 4 billion and outstanding debts of at least 315 million He did not release his tax returns contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and his promises in 2014 and 2015 to do so if he ran for office He said his tax returns were being audited and that his lawyers had advised him against releasing them After a lengthy court battle to block release of his tax returns and other records to the Manhattan district attorney for a criminal investigation including two appeals by Trump to the U S Supreme Court in February 2021 the high court allowed the records to be released to the prosecutor for review by a grand jury In October 2016 portions of Trump s state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times They show that he had declared a loss of 916 million that year which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years On November 8 2016 Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton After elector defections on both sides the official count was 304 to 227 The fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote he received nearly 2 9 million fewer votes than Clinton 46 3 to her 48 25 He was the only president who neither served in the military nor held any government office prior to becoming president Trump won 30 states including Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin states which had been considered a blue wall of Democratic strongholds since the 1990s His victory marked the return of an undivided Republican government a Republican president combined with Republican control of both chambers of Congress Trump s victory sparked protests in major U S cities First presidency 2017 2021 Early actions Trump took his first oath of office administered by Chief Justice John G Roberts Jr at the Capitol on January 20 2017 Official portrait 2017 Trump was inaugurated on January 20 2017 The day after his inauguration an estimated 2 6 million people worldwide including a half million in Washington D C protested against him in the Women s Marches During his first week in office Trump signed six executive orders including authorizing procedures for repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Obamacare withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations advancement of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects and planning for a wall along the U S border with Mexico Conflicts of interest Before being inaugurated Trump moved his businesses into a revocable trust rather than a blind trust or equivalent arrangement to cleanly sever himself from his business interests He continued to profit from his businesses and knew how his administration s policies affected them Although he said he would eschew new foreign deals the Trump Organization pursued operational expansions in Scotland Dubai and the Dominican Republic Lobbyists foreign government officials and Trump donors and allies generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his resorts and hotels Trump was sued for violating the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the U S Constitution the first time that the clauses had been substantively litigated One case was dismissed in lower court Two were dismissed by the U S Supreme Court as moot after his term Domestic policy Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020 when the COVID 19 recession began In December 2017 Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 It reduced tax rates for businesses and individuals and set the penalty associated with the Affordable Care Act s individual mandate to 0 The Trump administration claimed that the act would not decrease government revenue but 2018 revenues were 7 6 percent lower than projected Under Trump the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent to nearly 1 trillion in 2019 By the end of his term the U S national debt increased by 39 percent reaching 27 75 trillion and the U S debt to GDP ratio hit a post World War II high Trump also failed to deliver the 1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned Trump is the only modern U S president to leave office with a smaller workforce than when he took office by 3 million people Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40 percent and reversed Obama era policies directed at curbing climate change He withdrew from the Paris Agreement making the U S the only nation to not ratify it Trump aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels Natural gas expanded under Trump but coal continued to decline He rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions air and water pollution and the use of toxic substances He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge Trump dismantled many federal regulations on health labor and the environment among others including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns During his first six weeks in office he delayed suspended or reversed ninety federal regulations often after requests by the regulated industries The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of his proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation During his campaign Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act In office he scaled back the Act s implementation through executive orders He expressed a desire to let Obamacare fail his administration halved the enrollment period and drastically reduced funding for enrollment promotion In June 2018 the Trump administration joined 18 Republican led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the Act unconstitutional Their pleading would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans but was unsuccessful During the 2016 campaign Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety net programs In January 2020 he expressed willingness to consider cuts to them In response to the opioid epidemic Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy Trump barred organizations that provide abortions or abortion referrals from receiving federal funds He said he supported traditional marriage but considered the nationwide legality of same sex marriage settled His administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration s workplace protections against discrimination of LGBTQ people His attempted rollback of anti discrimination protections for transgender patients in August 2020 was halted by a federal judge after a Supreme Court ruling extended employees civil rights protections to gender identity and sexual orientation Trump has said he is opposed to gun control although his views have shifted over time His administration took an anti marijuana position revoking Obama era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana Trump is a long time advocate of capital punishment and his administration oversaw the federal government execute 13 prisoners more than in the previous 56 years combined ending a 17 year moratorium In 2016 he said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding Race relations Trump s comments on the 2017 Unite the Right rally condemning this egregious display of hatred bigotry and violence on many sides and stating that there were very fine people on both sides were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter protesters In a January 2018 discussion of immigration legislation Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador Haiti Honduras and African nations as shithole countries His remarks were condemned as racist Trump and group of officials and advisors on the way from the White House to St John s Church In July 2019 Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen all minorities three of whom are native born Americans should go back to the countries they came from Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240 187 mostly along party lines to condemn his racist comments White nationalist publications and social media praised his remarks which continued over the following days He continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign In June 2020 during the George Floyd protests federal law enforcement officials controversially removed a largely peaceful crowd of lawful protesters from Lafayette Square outside the White House Trump then posed with a Bible for a photo op at the nearby St John s Episcopal Church with religious leaders condemning both the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned his proposal to use the U S military against anti police brutality protesters Pardons and commutations Trump granted 237 requests for clemency fewer than all presidents since 1900 with the exception of George H W Bush and George W Bush Only 25 of them had been vetted by the Justice Department s Office of the Pardon Attorney the others were granted to people with personal or political connections to him his family and his allies or recommended by celebrities In his last full day in office he granted 73 pardons and commuted 70 sentences Several Trump allies were not eligible for pardons under Justice Department rules and in other cases the department had opposed clemency The pardons of three military service members convicted of or charged with violent crimes were opposed by military leaders Immigration Trump examines border wall prototypes in Otay Mesa California As president Trump described illegal immigration as an invasion of the United States and drastically escalated immigration enforcement He implemented harsh policies against asylum seekers and deployed nearly 6 000 troops the U S Mexico border to stop illegal crossings He reduced the number of refugees admitted to record lows from an annual limit of 110 000 before he took office to 15 000 in 2021 Trump also increased restrictions on granting permanent residency to immigrants needing public benefits One of Trump s central campaign promises was to build a wall along the U S Mexico border during his first term the U S built 73 miles 117 km of wall in areas without barriers and 365 miles 587 km to replace older barriers In 2018 Trump s refusal to sign any congressional spending bill unless it allocated funding for the border wall resulted in the longest ever federal government shutdown for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019 The shutdown ended after Trump agreed to fund the government without any funds for the wall To avoid another shutdown Congress passed a funding bill with 1 4 billion for border fencing in February Trump later declared a national emergency on the southern border to divert 6 1 billion of funding to the border wall despite congressional disagreement In January 2017 Trump signed an executive order that temporarily denied entry to citizens of seven Muslim majority countries The order caused many protests and legal challenges that resulted in nationwide injunctions A revised order giving some exceptions was also blocked by courts but the Supreme Court ruled in June that the ban could be enforced on those lacking a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the U S Trump replaced the ban in September with a presidential proclamation extending travel bans to North Koreans Chadians and some Venezuelan officials but excluded Iraq and Sudan The Supreme Court allowed that version to go into effect in December 2017 and ultimately upheld the ban in 2019 From 2017 to 2018 the Trump administration had a policy of family separation that separated over 4 400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U S Mexico border an unprecedented policy sparked public outrage in the country Despite Trump initially blaming Democrats and insisting he could not stop the policy with an executive order he acceded to public pressure in June 2018 and mandated that migrant families be detained together unless there is a concern of risk for the child A judge later ordered that the families be reunited and further separations stopped except in limited circumstances though over 1 000 additional children were separated from their families after the order Foreign policy Trump with the other G7 leaders at the 45th summit in France 2019 Trump described himself as a nationalist and his foreign policy as America First He supported populist neo nationalist and authoritarian governments Unpredictability uncertainty and inconsistency characterized foreign relations during his tenure Tensions between the U S and its European allies were strained under Trump He criticized NATO allies and privately suggested that the U S should withdraw from NATO Trump supported many of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu In 2020 the White House hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize their foreign relations An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018 when Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U S says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U S China trade deficit and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China The Trump administration weakened the toughest sanctions imposed by the U S after Russia s 2014 annexation of Crimea Trump withdrew the U S from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty citing alleged Russian noncompliance and supported a potential return of Russia to the G7 Trump repeatedly praised and according to some critics rarely criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin but opposed some actions of the Russian government In 2017 when North Korea s nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as a serious threat Trump the first sitting U S president to meet a North Korean leader met Kim three times in Singapore in June 2018 in Hanoi in February 2019 and in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in June 2019 However no denuclearization agreement was reached and talks in October 2019 broke down after one day Personnel Trump made daughter Ivanka and son in law Jared Kushner unpaid advisors The Trump administration had a high turnover of personnel particularly among White House staff By the end of his first year in office 34 percent of his original staff had resigned been fired or been reassigned As of early July 2018 update 61 percent of his senior aides had left and 141 staffers had left in the previous year Both figures set a record for recent presidents Notable early departures included National Security Advisor Michael Flynn after just 25 days and Press Secretary Sean Spicer Close personal aides to Trump including Steve Bannon Hope Hicks John McEntee and Keith Schiller quit or were forced out Some later returned in different posts He publicly disparaged several of his former top officials Trump had four White House chiefs of staff marginalizing or pushing out several Reince Priebus was replaced after seven months by John F Kelly Kelly resigned in December 2018 after a tumultuous tenure in which his influence waned and Trump subsequently disparaged him Kelly was succeeded by Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff he was replaced in March 2020 by Mark Meadows In May 2017 Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey While initially attributing this action to Comey s conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton s emails Trump said a few days later that he was concerned with Comey s role in the ongoing Trump Russia investigations At a private conversation in February he said he hoped Comey would drop the investigation into Flynn In March and April he asked Comey to lift the cloud impairing his ability to act by saying publicly that the FBI was not investigating him Trump lost three of his 15 original cabinet members within his first year Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct Trump was slow to appoint second tier officials in the executive branch saying many of the positions are unnecessary In October 2017 there were hundreds of sub cabinet positions without a nominee By January 8 2019 of 706 key positions 433 had been filled and he had no nominee for 264 Judiciary Trump appointed 226 Article III judges including 54 to the courts of appeals and three to the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett His Supreme Court nominees were noted as having politically shifted the Court to the right In the 2016 campaign he pledged that Roe v Wade would be overturned automatically if he were elected and provided the opportunity to appoint two or three anti abortion justices He later took credit when Roe was overturned in Dobbs v Jackson Women s Health Organization all three of his Supreme Court nominees voted with the majority Trump disparaged courts and judges he disagreed with often in personal terms and questioned the judiciary s constitutional authority His attacks on the courts drew rebukes from observers including sitting federal judges concerned about the effect of his statements on the judicial independence and public confidence in the judiciary COVID 19 pandemic Trump conducts a COVID 19 press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on March 15 2020 Trump initially ignored public health warnings and calls for action from health officials within his administration and Azar focusing on economic and political considerations of the outbreak Trump established the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 29 Prior to the pandemic Trump criticized the WHO and other international bodies which he asserted were taking advantage of U S aid On March 27 he signed into law the CARES Act a 2 2 trillion economic stimulus bill the largest stimulus in U S history In April 2020 Republican connected groups organized anti lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter although the targeted states did not meet his administration s guidelines for reopening He repeatedly pressured federal health agencies to take actions he favored such as approving unproven treatments On October 2 2020 he tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID 19 part of a White House outbreak By July 2020 Trump s handling of the COVID 19 pandemic had become a major issue in the presidential election Investigations After he assumed office Trump was the subject of increasing Justice Department and congressional scrutiny with investigations covering his election campaign transition and inauguration actions taken during his presidency his private businesses personal taxes and charitable foundation There were ten federal criminal investigations eight state and local investigations and twelve congressional investigations In July 2016 the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane an investigation into possible links between Russia and Trump s 2016 campaign After Trump fired Comey in May 2017 the FBI opened a second investigation into Trump s personal and business dealings with Russia In January 2017 three U S intelligence agencies jointly stated with high confidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to favor Trump Many suspiciouslinks between Trump associates and Russian officials were discovered Trump told Russian officials he was unconcerned about Russia s election interference Crossfire Hurricane was later transferred to Robert Mueller s special counsel investigation the investigation into Trump s ties to Russia was ended by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after he told the FBI that Mueller would pursue the matter At the request of Rosenstein the Mueller investigation examined criminal matters in connection with Russia s 2016 election interference Mueller submitted his final report in March 2019 The report found that Russia did interfere in 2016 to favor Trump and that Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged the effort but that the evidence did not establish that Trump campaign members conspired or coordinated with Russia Trump claimed the report exonerated him despite Mueller writing that it did not The report also detailed potential obstruction of justice by Trump but did not draw ultimate conclusions and left the decision to charge the laws to Congress In April 2019 the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump s banks Deutsche Bank and Capital One and his accounting firm Mazars USA He sued the banks Mazars and committee chair Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures In May two judges ruled that both Mazars and the banks must comply with the subpoenas Trump s attorneys appealed In September 2022 Trump and the committee agreed to a settlement regarding Mazars and the firm began turning over documents Impeachments Trump displaying the headline Trump acquitted Trump was impeached twice The first time he was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of justice for pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden in an attempt to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election The Senate acquitted him of both charges on February 5 2020 with Senator Mitt Romney the only Republican voting to convict him one of the charges Trump was impeached a second time on January 13 2021 for incitement of insurrection leading to the Capitol riot After Trump had left office on January 20 he was acquitted on February 13 when the Senate voted 57 43 to convict ten votes short of the two thirds majority required Seven Republicans voted to convict which was the most bipartisan support in any Senate impeachment trial of a president or former president 2020 presidential electionPresidential campaign Trump filed to run for re election only a few hours after becoming president in 2017 He held his first re election rally less than a month after taking office and officially became the Republican nominee in August 2020 Trump s campaign focused on crime claiming that cities would descend into lawlessness if Democratic nominee Joe Biden won He repeatedly misrepresented Biden s positions and appealed to racism Starting in early 2020 Trump sowed doubts about the election claiming without evidence that it would be rigged and that widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud He blocked funding for the U S Postal Service saying he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail He repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the results if he lost and commit to a peaceful transition of power Loss to Biden and rejection of results The electoral vote results of the 2020 election Biden defeated Trump 306 232 Biden won the November 2020 election receiving 81 3 million votes 51 3 percent to Trump s 74 2 million 46 8 percent and 306 electoral votes to Trump s 232 The Electoral College formalized Biden s victory on December 14 Even before the results were known on the morning after the election Trump declared victory Days later when Biden was projected the winner Trump baselessly alleged election fraud As part of an effort to overturn the results Trump and his allies filed many legal challenges to the results which were rejected by at least 86 judges in both state and federal courts for having no factual or legal basis Trump s allegations were also refuted by state election officials and the Supreme Court declined to hear a case asking it to overturn the results in four states won by Biden Trump repeatedly sought help to overturn the results personally pressuring Republican local and state office holders Republican legislators the Justice Department and Vice President Pence urging various actions such as replacing presidential electors or requesting that Georgia officials find votes and announce a recalculated result In the weeks after the election Trump withdrew from public activities He initially blocked government officials from cooperating in Biden s presidential transition After three weeks the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the apparent winner of the election allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team While Trump said he recommended that the GSA begin transition protocols he still did not formally concede Trump did not attend Biden s inauguration on January 20 January 6 Capitol attack A crowd of Trump supporters during the January 6 attack on the U S Capitol in 2021 In December 2020 reports emerged that the U S military was on red alert and ranking officers had discussed what to do if Trump declared martial law Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel grew concerned that Trump would attempt a coup or military action against China or Iran Milley insisted that he be consulted about any military orders from Trump including the use of nuclear weapons At noon on January 6 2021 while Congress was certifying the presidential election results at the U S Capitol Trump held a rally at the Ellipse in Washington D C where he called for the election to be overturned and urged his supporters to fight like hell and take back our country by marching to the Capitol His supporters then formed a mob that broke into the building disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress During the attack Trump posted on social media but did not ask the rioters to disperse until 6 p m when he told them in a Tweet to go home with love amp in peace while calling them great patriots and restating that he had won the election Congress later reconvened and confirmed Biden s victory in the early hours of January 7 More than 140 police officers were injured and five people died either during or after the attack The event has been described as an attempted self coup by Trump Between terms 2021 2025 Upon leaving the White House Trump began living at Mar a Lago establishing an office there as provided for by the Former Presidents Act Trump s continuing false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the big lie by his critics although in May 2021 with his supporters he began using the term to refer to the election itself The Republican Party used his election narrative to justify imposing new voting restrictions in its favor As of July 2022 he continued to pressure state legislators to overturn the election Unlike other former presidents Trump continued to dominate his party a 2022 profile in The New York Times described him as a modern party boss He continued fundraising raising a war chest containing more than twice that of the Republican Party and profited from fundraisers many Republican candidates held at Mar a Lago Much of his focus was on party governance and installing in key posts officials loyal to him In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices In February 2021 Trump registered a new company Trump Media amp Technology Group TMTG for providing social networking services to U S customers In March 2024 TMTG merged with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition and became a public company In February 2022 TMTG launched Truth Social a social media platform In 2019 journalist E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s and sued him for defamation over his denial Carroll sued Trump again in 2022 for battery and more defamation Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered to pay 5 million in one case and 83 3 million in the other In 2022 New York filed a civil lawsuit was filed against Trump accusing him of inflating The Trump Organization s value to gain an advantage with lenders and banks Trump was found liable and ordered to pay 350 million plus interest Classified intelligence material found during search of Mar a Lago In connection with Trump s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his involvement in the January 6 attack in December 2022 the U S House committee on the attack recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding conspiracy to defraud the United States and inciting or assisting an insurrection In August 2023 a Trump was indicted on 13 charges including racketeering by a grand jury in Fulton County Georgia for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election in the state In January 2022 the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents Trump had taken to Mar a Lago after leaving the White House some of which were classified In the ensuing Justice Department investigation officials retrieved more classified documents from Trump s lawyers On August 8 2022 FBI agents searched Mar a Lago for illegally held documents including those in breach of the Espionage Act collecting 11 sets of classified documents some marked top secret A federal grand jury constituted by Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in June 2023 on 31 counts of willfully retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act among other charges Trump pleaded not guilty In July 2024 judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case ruling Smith s appointment as special prosecutor was unconstitutional In May 2024 Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records The case stemmed from evidence that Trump booked Michael Cohen s hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels as business expenses to cover up his alleged 2006 2007 affair with Daniels during the 2016 election On January 10 2025 the judge gave Trump a no penalty sentence known as an unconditional discharge saying that punitive requirements would have interfered with presidential immunity After Trump s re election the 2020 election obstruction case and the classified documents case were dismissed without prejudice due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents 2024 presidential electionTrump at a rally in Arizona August 2024 On November 15 2022 Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election and set up a fundraising account In March 2023 the campaign began diverting 10 percent of the donations to his leadership PAC His campaign had paid 100 million towards his legal bills by March 2024 In December 2023 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump disqualified for the Colorado Republican primary for his role in inciting the January 6 2021 attack on Congress In March 2024 the U S Supreme Court restored his name to the ballot in a unanimous decision ruling that Colorado lacks the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which bars insurrectionists from holding federal office During the campaign Trump made increasingly violent and authoritarian statements He also said that he would weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department against his political opponents and use the military to go after Democratic politicians and those that do not support his candidacy He used harsher more dehumanizing anti immigrant rhetoric than during his presidency His harsher rhetoric against his political enemies has been described by some historians and scholars as authoritarian fascist and unlike anything a political candidate has ever said in American history Age and health concerns also arose during the campaign with several medical experts highlighting an increase in rambling tangential speech and behavioral disinhibition Trump mentioned rigged election and election interference earlier and more frequently than in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and refused to commit to accepting the 2024 election results Analysts for The New York Times described this as an intensification of his heads I win tails you cheated rhetorical strategy the paper said the claim of a rigged election had become the backbone of the campaign On July 13 2024 Trump was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler Township Pennsylvania Two days later the 2024 Republican National Convention nominated him as their presidential candidate with Senator JD Vance as his running mate In September he was targeted in another assassination attempt in Florida Trump won the election in November 2024 with 312 electoral votes to incumbent vice president Kamala Harris s 226 making him the second president in U S history after Grover Cleveland in 1892 to be elected to a non consecutive second term He also won the popular vote with 49 8 to Harris s 48 3 Trump s victory in 2024 was part of a global backlash against incumbent parties in part due to the 2021 2023 inflation surge Several outlets described his re election as an extraordinary comeback Second presidency 2025 present Trump took his second oath of office administered by Chief Justice John G Roberts Jr in the Capitol rotunda January 20 2025 Trump began his second term when he was inaugurated on January 20 2025 He is the oldest individual to assume the presidency and the first president with a felony conviction Early actions Trump signing executive orders at Capital One Arena on January 20 2025 Upon taking office Trump signed a series of executive orders described as a shock and awe campaign that tested the limits of executive authority with many drawing immediate legal challenges He issued more executive orders on his first day than any other president Four days into Trump s second term analysis conducted by Time found that nearly two thirds of his executive actions mirror or partially mirror proposals from Project 2025 He pardoned around 1 500 January 6 rioters including those who violently attacked police and commuted the sentences of 14 In his first weeks several of Trump s actions ignored or violated federal laws regulations and the Constitution Mass firings of federal employees and hiring freezes Trump implemented a hiring freeze across the federal government ordered telework of federal employees to be discontinued within 30 days and the at will Schedule Policy Career classification of employees was created Trump initiated mass firings of employees many described as unprecedented or in violation of federal law with the intent of replacing them with workers more aligned with Trump s agenda Trump ordered an end to diversity equity and inclusion DEI projects in the federal government and placed employees in DEI offices on leave He rescinded Executive Order 11246 which mandated affirmative action and nondiscrimination practices for federal contractors Domestic policy Trump appointed oil gas and chemical lobbyists to the EPA to reverse climate regulations and pollution controls He declared a national energy emergency allowing for the suspension of some environmental regulations and faster approvals of energy projects and pushed back on the development of renewable energy sources Trump initiated a review of the legality and continued applicability of the EPA endangerment finding which is the basis of most federal regulations on greenhouse gases Trump again withdrew the U S from the Paris Agreement Trump frequently blamed diversity equity and inclusion and wokeness for problems in government and society and equated diversity with incompetence He repealed and reversed civil rights protections and anti discrimination policies in the federal government Immigration In his first days in office Trump enacted far reaching measures targeting illegal immigration He instructed border patrol agents to summarily deport migrants crossing the border illegally disabled the CBP One app that was being used to schedule border crossings resumed remain in Mexico labeled cartels as terrorist groups deployed troops to the southern border and renewed construction of a southern border wall Trump enacted a mass deportation operation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE reaching over 1000 daily arrests one week into his presidency and a goal of reaching 1 200 to 1 500 daily arrests Trump initially focused deportation operations in sanctuary cities and against individuals on target lists of criminals formed prior to the Trump administration Removals were also expedited for asylum applicants who failed to meet requirements Trump also suspended refugee processing for four months and revoked the parole status of migrants who entered the U S under CBP One and CHNV humanitarian parole Trump attempted to remove birthright citizenship On January 29 2025 Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law Foreign policy Trump s second term foreign policy was described as imperialist and expansionist Trump ordered the U S Government to stop funding and working with the WHO and announced the U S s intention to formally leave the WHO Trump and his incoming administration helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas alongside the Biden administration enacted a day prior to Trump s inauguration Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs beginning with a threat against Columbia to allow deportation flights in January and a trade war with Canada and Mexico later in February During the state visit of Netanyahu to Washington on February 4 Trump declared that the United States could take over the Gaza Strip after Palestinians were removed and relocated in order to convert the area into what he called the Riviera of the Middle East Personnel On February 3 2025 the White House said that Elon Musk was a special government employee Trump gave Musk s Department of Government Efficiency which is not a federal department access to many federal government agencies Musk teams operated in eleven agencies by early February including the Treasury Department s 5 trillion payment system Small Business Administration Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration Trump and Musk dismantled most of USAID Political practice and rhetoricBeginning with his 2016 campaign Trump s politics and rhetoric led to the creation of a political movement known as Trumpism Trump s political positions are populist 530 more specifically described as right wing populist He helped bring far right fringe ideas and organizations into the mainstream Many of Trump s actions and rhetoric have been described as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding His political base has been compared to a cult of personality Trump s rhetoric and actions inflame anger and exacerbate distrust through an us versus them narrative 544 Trump explicitly and routinely disparages racial religious and ethnic minorities 545 and scholars consistently find that racial animus regarding blacks immigrants and Muslims are the best predictors of support for Trump 546 Trump s rhetoric has been described as using fearmongering and demagogy The alt right movement coalesced around and supported his candidacy due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration He has a strong appeal to evangelical Christian voters and Christian nationalists and his rallies take on the symbols rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism Racial and gender views Many of Trump s comments and actions have been described as racist In national polling about half of respondents said that he is racist a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled his political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of five black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case even after they were exonerated in 2002 when the actual rapist confessed and his DNA matched the evidence In 2024 the men sued Trump for defamation after he said in a televised debate that they had committed the crime and killed the woman source source source source source source source track Trump answering questions about the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville In 2011 when he was reportedly considering a presidential run Trump became the leading proponent of the racist birther conspiracy theory alleging that Barack Obama the first black U S president was not born in the U S In April he claimed credit for pressuring the White House to publish the long form birth certificate which he considered fraudulent and later said this made him very popular In September 2016 amid pressure he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U S In 2017 he reportedly expressed birther views privately During the 2024 presidential campaign Trump made false attacks against the racial identity of his opponent Kamala Harris that were described as reminiscent of the birther conspiracy theory Trump has a history of belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media He made lewd comments disparaged women s physical appearances and referred to them using derogatory epithets At least 25 women publicly accused him of sexual misconduct including rape kissing without consent groping looking under women s skirts and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants He has denied the allegations In October 2016 a 2005 hot mic recording surfaced in which Trump bragged about kissing and groping women without their consent saying that when you re a star they let you do it You can do anything Grab em by the pussy Trump characterized the comments as locker room talk and the incident s widespread media exposure led to Trump s first public apology during his 2016 presidential campaign Link to violence and hate crimes Trump s refusal to condemn the white supremacist Proud Boys during a 2020 presidential debate and his comment Proud Boys stand back and stand by were attributed to increased recruitment for the pro Trump group Trump has been identified as a key figure in increasing political violence in America both for and against him He is described as embracing extremism conspiracy theories such as Q Anon and far right militia movements to a greater extent than any modern American president and engaging in stochastic terrorism Research suggests Trump s rhetoric is associated with an increased incidence of hate crimes and that he has an emboldening effect on expressing prejudicial attitudes due to his normalization of explicit racial rhetoric During his 2016 campaign he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes including participants in the storming of the U S Capitol cited his rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive leniency A nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which he was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence mostly by white men and primarily against minorities Trump s normalization and revisionist history of the January 6 Capitol attack and grant of clemency to all January 6 rioters was described by counterterrorism researchers as encouraging future political violence Conspiracy theories Before and throughout his presidency Trump promoted numerous conspiracy theories including Obama birtherism the Clinton body count conspiracy theory the conspiracy theory movement QAnon the Global warming hoax theory Trump Tower wiretapping allegations that Osama bin Laden was alive and Obama and Biden had members of Navy SEAL Team 6 killed and alleged Ukrainian interference in U S elections In at least two instances Trump clarified to press that he believed the conspiracy theory in question During and since the 2020 presidential election Trump promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat that were characterized as the big lie Truthfulness Fact checkers from The Washington Post the Toronto Star and CNN compiled data on false or misleading claims orange background and false claims violet foreground respectively As a candidate and as president Trump frequently makes false statements in public remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics His falsehoods are a distinctive part of his political identity and have been described as firehosing His false and misleading statements were documented by fact checkers including at The Washington Post which tallied 30 573 false or misleading statements made by him during his first presidency increasing in frequency over time Some of Trump s falsehoods were inconsequential such as his repeated claim of the biggest inaugural crowd ever Others had more far reaching effects such as his promotion of antimalarial drugs as an unproven treatment for COVID 19 causing a U S shortage of these drugs and panic buying in Africa and South Asia Other misinformation such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the spread of radical Islamic terror served his domestic political purposes His attacks on mail in ballots and other election practices weakened public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it Trump habitually does not apologize for his falsehoods Until 2018 the media rarely referred to Trump s falsehoods as lies including when he repeated demonstrably false statements Social media Trump s social media presence attracted worldwide attention after he joined Twitter in 2009 He tweeted frequently during his 2016 campaign and as president until Twitter banned him after the January 6 attack He often used Twitter to communicate directly with the public and sideline the press In June 2017 the White House press secretary said that his tweets were official presidential statements After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact checks in May 2020 In response he tweeted that social media platforms totally silence conservatives and that he would strongly regulate or close them down In the days after the storming of the Capitol he was banned from Facebook Instagram Twitter and other platforms The loss of his social media presence diminished his ability to shape events and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter In February 2022 he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following Elon Musk after acquiring Twitter reinstated his Twitter account in November 2022 Meta Platforms two year ban lapsed in January 2023 allowing him to return to Facebook and Instagram although in 2024 he continued to call the company an enemy of the people In January 2025 Meta agreed to pay 25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit filed by Trump over his suspension Relationship with the press Trump talking to the press March 2017 Trump sought media attention throughout his career sustaining a love hate relationship with the press In the 2016 campaign he benefited from a record amount of free media coverage The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that his media dominance enthralled the public and created must see TV As a candidate and as president Trump frequently accused the press of bias calling it the fake news media and the enemy of the people In 2018 journalist Lesley Stahl said that he had privately told her that he intentionally discredited the media so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you The first Trump presidency reduced formal press briefings from about a hundred in 2017 to about half that in 2018 and to two in 2019 they also revoked the press passes of two White House reporters which were restored by the courts Trump s 2020 presidential campaign sued The New York Times The Washington Post and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about Trump s stance on Russian election interference All the suits were dismissed The Atlantic characterized the suits as an intimidation tactic By 2024 he repeatedly voiced support for outlawing political dissent and criticism and said that reporters should be prosecuted for not divulging confidential sources and media companies should possibly lose their broadcast licenses for unfavorable coverage of him In 2024 Trump sued ABC News for defamation after George Stephanopoulos said on air that a jury had found him civilly liable for raping E Jean Carroll The case was settled in December with ABC s parent company Walt Disney apologizing for the inaccurate claims about Trump and agreeing to donate 15 million to Trump s future presidential library Personal lifeFamily In 1977 Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova They had three children Donald Jr b 1977 Ivanka b 1981 and Eric b 1984 The couple divorced in 1990 following his affair with model and actress Marla Maples He and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999 They have one daughter Tiffany b 1993 whom Maples raised in California In 2005 he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss They have one son Barron b 2006 Health Trump says he has never drunk alcohol smoked cigarettes or used drugs He sleeps about four or five hours a night Trump has called golfing his primary form of exercise but usually does not walk the course He considers exercise a waste of energy because he believes the body is like a battery with a finite amount of energy which is depleted by exercise In 2015 his campaign released a letter from his longtime personal physician Harold Bornstein stating that he 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 of Trump s agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on Bornstein s office Religion Donald Trump declared that he was a Presbyterian and a Protestant in 2016 though in 2020 he began to identify as a nondenominational Christian AssessmentsPublic image A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U S leadership between 2016 and 2017 found that Trump led Obama in job approval in 29 countries most of them non democracies approval of U S leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries By mid 2020 16 percent of international respondents to a 13 nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in him lower than China s Xi Jinping and Russia s Vladimir Putin During his first presidency research from 2020 found that Trump had a stronger impact on popular assessments towards American political parties and partisan opinions than any president since the Truman administration In 2021 Trump was identified as the only president never to reach a 50 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll which dates to 1938 partially due to a record high partisan gap in his approval ratings 88 percent among Republicans and 7 percent among Democrats His early ratings were unusually stable ranging between 35 and 49 percent He finished his term with a rating between 29 and 34 percent the lowest of any president since modern polling began and a record low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency In Gallup s annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most he placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018 tied with Obama for first in 2019 and placed first in 2020 Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1946 he was the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office According to Gallup Trump began his second term with an approval rating of 47 and a disapproval rating of 48 Trump s approval rating was extremely politically polarized being approved by 91 of Republicans 46 of independents and 6 of Democrats Scholarly rankings In the C SPAN Presidential Historians Survey 2021 historians ranked Trump as the fourth worst president He rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills The Siena College Research Institute s 2022 survey ranked him 43rd out of 45 presidents He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck willingness to take risks and party leadership and he ranked last in several categories In 2018 and 2024 surveys of members of the American Political Science Association ranked him the worst president See alsoAwards and honors received by Donald TrumpNotesBeginning when Trump was three years old his father gave each of his children 6 000 every year the maximum allowed without incurring a gift tax To avoid taxes Fred made them landlords of two of his housing developments paying each 13 928 in rent every year Trump acknowledged a negative net worth in 1990 of minus 900 million in his book The Art of the Comeback Timothy L O Brien explains in his book TrumpNation that Forbes dropped Trump from its list of wealthiest Americans from 1990 1995 Not until 1997 did Forbes acknowledge Trump s 1990 negative net worth of minus 900 million Presidential elections in the U S are decided by the Electoral College Each state names a number of electors equal to its representation in Congress and in most states all electors vote for the winner of their state s popular vote Attributed to multiple sources 399 Attributed to multiple sources Attributed to multiple sources 537 538 541 542 ReferencesKranish amp Fisher 2017 pp 30 37 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 p v Horowitz Jason September 22 2015 Donald Trump s Old Queens Neighborhood Contrasts With the Diverse Area Around It The New York Times Retrieved November 7 2018 Buettner amp Craig 2024 pp 30 31 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 pp 33 38 45 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 pp 45 48 Mahler Jonathan Eder Steve August 27 2016 No Vacancies for Blacks How Donald Trump Got His Start and Was First Accused of Bias The New York Times Retrieved January 13 2018 Rich Frank April 30 2018 The Original Donald Trump New York Retrieved May 8 2018 Blair 2015 p 250 Mahler Jonathan Flegenheimer Matt June 20 2016 What Donald Trump Learned From Joseph McCarthy s Right Hand Man The New York Times Retrieved May 26 2020 1634 1699 McCusker J J 1997 How Much Is That in Real Money A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States Addenda et Corrigenda PDF American Antiquarian Society 1700 1799 McCusker J J 1992 How Much Is That in Real Money A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States PDF American Antiquarian Society 1800 present Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Consumer Price Index estimate 1800 Retrieved February 29 2024 Kranish Michael O Harrow Robert Jr January 23 2016 Inside the government s racial bias case against Donald Trump s company and how he fought it The Washington Post Retrieved January 7 2021 Johnston 2016 pp 45 46 Brenner Marie June 28 2017 How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America Vanity Fair Retrieved May 26 2020 Qiu Linda June 21 2016 Yep Donald Trump s companies have declared bankruptcy more than four times PolitiFact Retrieved May 25 2023 Winter Tom June 24 2016 Trump Bankruptcy Math Doesn t Add Up NBC Retrieved February 2 2025 Barstow David Craig Susanne Buettner Russ October 2 2018 Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father The New York Times Retrieved October 2 2018 Handy Bruce April 1 2019 Trump Once Proposed Building a Castle on Madison Avenue The Atlantic Retrieved July 28 2024 Nevius James April 3 2019 The winding history of Donald Trump s first major Manhattan real estate project Curbed Kessler Glenn March 3 2016 Trump s false claim he built his empire with a small loan from his father The Washington Post Retrieved September 29 2021 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 p 84 Geist William E April 8 1984 The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump The New York Times Magazine Retrieved September 29 2021 Haberman Maggie October 31 2019 Trump Lifelong New Yorker Declares Himself a Resident of Florida The New York Times Retrieved January 24 2020 Trump Revises Plaza Loan The New York Times November 4 1992 Retrieved May 23 2023 Trump s Plaza Hotel Bankruptcy Plan Approved The New York Times Reuters December 12 1992 Retrieved May 24 2023 Segal David January 16 2016 What Donald Trump s Plaza Deal Reveals About His White House Bid The New York Times Retrieved May 3 2022 Stout David Gilpin Kenneth N April 12 1995 Trump Is Selling Plaza Hotel To Saudi and Asian Investors The New York Times Retrieved July 18 2019 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 p 298 Bagli Charles V June 1 2005 Trump Group Selling West Side Parcel for 1 8 billion The New York Times Retrieved May 17 2016 Kiel Paul Buettner Russ May 11 2024 IRS Audit of Trump Could Cost Former President More Than 100 Million ProPublica Retrieved August 26 2024 McQuade Dan August 16 2015 The Truth About the Rise and Fall of Donald Trump s Atlantic City Empire Philadelphia Retrieved March 21 2016 Kranish amp Fisher 2017 p 128 Saxon Wolfgang April 28 1986 Trump Buys Hilton s Hotel in Atlantic City The New York Times Retrieved May 25 2023 Trump s Castle and Plaza file for bankruptcy United Press International March 9 1992 Retrieved May 25 2023 Company News Taj Mahal is out of Bankruptcy The New York Times October 5 1991 Retrieved May 22 2008 O Connor Claire May 29 2011 Fourth Time s A Charm How Donald Trump Made Bankruptcy Work For Him Forbes Retrieved January 27 2022 Norris Floyd June 7 1995 Trump Plaza casino stock trades today on Big Board The New York Times Retrieved December 14 2014 Tully Shawn March 10 2016 How Donald Trump Made Millions Off His Biggest Business Failure Fortune Retrieved May 6 2018 Peterson Withorn Chase April 23 2018 Donald Trump Has Gained More Than 100 Million On Mar a Lago Forbes Retrieved July 4 2018 Dangremond Sam Kim Leena December 22 2017 A History of Mar a Lago Donald Trump s American Castle Town amp Country Retrieved July 3 2018 Garcia Ahiza December 29 2016 Trump s 17 golf courses teed up Everything you need to know CNN Money Retrieved January 23 2025 Anthony Zane Sanders Kathryn Fahrenthold David A April 13 2018 Whatever happened to Trump neckties They re over So is most of Trump s merchandising empire The Washington Post Retrieved September 29 2021 Williams Aaron Narayanswamy Anu January 25 2017 How Trump has made millions by selling his name The Washington Post Retrieved December 12 2017 Paulson Michael March 6 2016 For a Young Donald J Trump Broadway Held Sway The New York Times Retrieved March 7 2016 Markazi Arash July 14 2015 5 things to know about Donald Trump s foray into doomed USFL ESPN Retrieved September 30 2021 O Donnell amp Rutherford 1991 p 137 143 Hogan Kevin April 10 2016 The Strange Tale of Donald Trump s 1989 Biking Extravaganza Politico Magazine Retrieved April 12 2016 Buettner Russ Craig Susanne May 7 2019 Decade in the Red Trump Tax Figures Show Over 1 Billion in Business Losses The New York Times Retrieved May 8 2019 Mattingly Phil Jorgensen Sarah August 23 2016 The Gordon Gekko era Donald Trump s lucrative and controversial time as an activist investor CNN Retrieved September 14 2022 Peterson Barbara April 13 2017 The Crash of Trump Air The Daily Beast Retrieved May 17 2023 10 Donald Trump Business Failures Time October 11 2016 Retrieved May 17 2023 Haberman 2022 pp 129 130 Rutenberg Jim June 22 2002 Three Beauty Pageants Leaving CBS for NBC The New York Times Retrieved August 14 2016 de Moraes Lisa June 22 2002 There She Goes Pageants Move to NBC The Washington Post Retrieved August 14 2016 Zara Christopher October 26 2016 Why the heck does Donald Trump have a Walk of Fame star anyway It s not the reason you think Fast Company Retrieved June 16 2018 Puente Maria June 29 2015 NBC to Donald Trump You re fired USA Today Retrieved July 28 2015 D Antonio 2015 pp 281 282 D Antonio 2015 pp 282 283 Eder Steve November 18 2016 Donald Trump Agrees to Pay 25 Million in Trump University Settlement The New York Times Retrieved November 18 2016 Tigas Mike Wei Sisi May 9 2013 Nonprofit Explorer ProPublica Retrieved September 9 2016 Fahrenthold David A September 10 2016 How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people s money The Washington Post Retrieved March 19 2024 Pallotta Frank August 18 2022 Investigation into Vince McMahon s hush money payments reportedly turns up Trump charity donations CNN Retrieved March 19 2024 Solnik Claude September 15 2016 Taking a peek at Trump s foundation tax returns Long Island Business News Retrieved September 30 2021 Cillizza Chris Fahrenthold David A September 15 2016 Meet the reporter who s giving Donald Trump fits The Washington Post Retrieved June 26 2021 Fahrenthold David A October 3 2016 Trump Foundation ordered to stop fundraising by N Y attorney general s office The Washington Post Retrieved May 17 2023 Jacobs Ben December 24 2016 Donald Trump to dissolve his charitable foundation after mounting complaints The Guardian Retrieved December 25 2016 Thomsen Jacqueline June 14 2018 Five things to know about the lawsuit against the Trump Foundation The Hill Retrieved June 15 2018 Goldmacher Shane December 18 2018 Trump Foundation Will Dissolve Accused of Shocking Pattern of Illegality The New York Times Retrieved May 9 2019 Katersky Aaron November 7 2019 President Donald Trump ordered to pay 2M to collection of nonprofits as part of civil lawsuit ABC News Retrieved November 7 2019 Donald Trump Three decades 4 095 lawsuits USA Today Retrieved April 17 2018 Winter Tom June 24 2016 Trump Bankruptcy Math Doesn t Add Up NBC News Retrieved February 26 2020 Flitter Emily July 17 2016 Art of the spin Trump bankers question his portrayal of financial comeback Reuters Retrieved October 14 2018 Smith Allan December 8 2017 Trump s long and winding history with Deutsche Bank could now be at the center of Robert Mueller s investigation Business Insider Retrieved October 14 2018 Riley Charles Egan Matt January 12 2021 Deutsche Bank won t do any more business with Trump CNN Retrieved September 14 2022 Stump Scott October 26 2015 Donald Trump My dad gave me a small loan of 1 million to get started CNBC Retrieved November 13 2016 Barstow David Craig Susanne Buettner Russ October 2 2018 11 Takeaways From The Times s Investigation into Trump s Wealth The New York Times Retrieved October 3 2018 Stracqualursi Veronica April 20 2018 Ex Forbes reporter says Trump posed as executive lied to him to crack Forbes 400 list CNN Retrieved December 25 2024 Boyer Dave October 3 2016 Donald Trump revealed 900 million business loss in 97 book The Washington Times Retrieved December 18 2024 O Brien 2005 p 150 151 Johnston 2021 p 20 LaFranco Rob Chung Grace Peterson Withorn Chase 2024 Forbes World s Billionaires List The Richest in 2024 Forbes Retrieved January 20 2025 Enter trump in the search box Buncombe Andrew July 4 2018 Trump boasted about writing many books his ghostwriter says otherwise The Independent Retrieved October 11 2020 Mayer Jane July 18 2016 Donald Trump s Ghostwriter Tells All The New Yorker Retrieved June 19 2017 LaFrance Adrienne December 21 2015 Three Decades of Donald Trump Film and TV Cameos The Atlantic Kranish amp Fisher 2017 p 166 Massie Christopher Kaczynski Andrew March 16 2016 There Are Hours Of Audio Of Donald Trump s Nationally Syndicated Radio Show In The 2000s BuzzFeed Retrieved December 6 2024 Grossmann Matt Hopkins David A September 9 2016 How the conservative media is taking over the Republican Party The Washington Post Retrieved October 19 2018 Rao Sonia February 4 2021 Facing expulsion Trump resigns from the Screen Actors Guild You have done nothing for me The Washington Post Retrieved February 5 2021 Harmata Claudia February 7 2021 Donald Trump Banned from Future Re Admission to SAG AFTRA It s More Than a Symbolic Step People Retrieved February 8 2021 Buettner amp Craig 2024 p 7 Mark Burnett the television producer who made Trump a star did not just hand him a fortune Grynbaum Michael M Parker Ashley July 16 2016 Donald Trump the Political Showman Born on The Apprentice The New York Times Retrieved July 8 2018 Nussbaum Emily July 24 2017 The TV That Created Donald Trump The New Yorker Retrieved October 18 2023 Poniewozik James September 28 2020 Donald Trump Was the Real Winner of The Apprentice The New York Times Retrieved October 18 2023 Gillin Joshua August 24 2015 Bush says Trump was a Democrat longer than a Republican in the last decade PolitiFact Retrieved March 18 2017 Trump Officially Joins Reform Party CNN October 25 1999 Retrieved December 26 2020 Oreskes Michael September 2 1987 Trump Gives a Vague Hint of Candidacy The New York Times Retrieved February 17 2016 Butterfield Fox November 18 1987 Trump Urged To Head Gala Of Democrats The New York Times Retrieved October 1 2021 Meacham 2016 p 326 Gass Nick November 6 2015 George W Bush surprised by dad s criticism author says Politico Retrieved December 20 2024 Winger Richard December 25 2011 Donald Trump Ran For President in 2000 in Several Reform Party Presidential Primaries Ballot Access News Retrieved October 1 2021 Clift Eleanor July 18 2016 The Last Time Trump Wrecked a Party The Daily Beast Retrieved October 14 2021 Nagourney Adam February 14 2000 Reform Bid Said to Be a No Go for Trump The New York Times Retrieved December 26 2020 MacAskill Ewen May 16 2011 Donald Trump bows out of 2012 US presidential election race The Guardian Retrieved February 28 2020 Bobic Igor Stein Sam February 22 2017 How CPAC Helped Launch Donald Trump s Political Career HuffPost Retrieved February 28 2020 Lerner Adam B June 16 2015 The 10 best lines from Donald Trump s announcement speech Politico Retrieved June 7 2018 Graham David A May 13 2016 The Lie of Trump s Self Funding Campaign The Atlantic Retrieved June 7 2018 Bump Philip March 23 2016 Why Donald Trump is poised to win the nomination and lose the general election in one poll The Washington Post Retrieved October 1 2021 Ohlemacher Stephen May 26 2016 Mister 1 237 North Dakota delegate puts Trump over the top AP News Retrieved January 28 2025 McCammon Sarah August 10 2016 Donald Trump s controversial speech often walks the line NPR News Retrieved October 1 2021 The King of Whoppers Donald Trump FactCheck org December 21 2015 Retrieved March 4 2019 Holan Angie Drobnic Qiu Linda December 21 2015 2015 Lie of the Year the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump PolitiFact Retrieved October 1 2021 Farhi Paul February 26 2016 Think Trump s wrong Fact checkers can tell you how often Hint A lot The Washington Post Retrieved October 1 2021 Walsh Kenneth T August 15 2016 Trump Media Is Dishonest and Corrupt U S News amp World Report Retrieved October 1 2021 Blake Aaron July 6 2016 Donald Trump is waging war on political correctness And he s losing The Washington Post Retrieved October 1 2021 Hartig Hannah Lapinski John Psyllos Stephanie July 19 2016 Poll Clinton and Trump Now Tied as GOP Convention Kicks Off NBC News Retrieved October 1 2021 Levingston Ivan July 15 2016 Donald Trump officially names Mike Pence for VP CNBC Retrieved October 1 2021 Trump closes the deal becomes Republican nominee for president Fox News July 19 2016 Retrieved October 1 2021 US presidential debate Trump won t commit to accept election result BBC News October 20 2016 Retrieved October 27 2016 Johnson Jenna April 12 2017 Trump on NATO I said it was obsolete It s no longer obsolete The Washington Post Retrieved November 26 2019 Edwards 2018 On the campaign trail Trump repeatedly called North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO obsolete Rucker Philip Costa Robert March 21 2016 Trump questions need for NATO outlines noninterventionist foreign policy The Washington Post Retrieved August 24 2021 Trump s promises before and after the election BBC News September 19 2017 Retrieved October 1 2021 Donald Trump s Mexico wall Who is going to pay for it BBC News February 6 2017 Retrieved December 9 2017 Donald Trump emphasizes plans to build real wall at Mexico border Canadian Broadcasting Corporation August 19 2015 Retrieved September 29 2015 Oh Inae August 19 2015 Donald Trump The 14th Amendment is Unconstitutional Mother Jones Retrieved November 22 2015 Schaffner Brian F Macwilliams Matthew Nteta Tatishe March 2018 Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism Political Science Quarterly 133 1 9 34 doi 10 1002 polq 12737 Wolf Z Byron April 6 2018 Trump basically called Mexicans rapists again CNN Retrieved June 28 2022 NBC Officially Fires Trump From Celebrity Apprentice NBC News Associated Press August 13 2015 Retrieved November 9 2024 Diamond Jeremy Frates Chris July 22 2015 Donald Trump s 92 page financial disclosure released CNN Retrieved September 14 2022 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report U S OGE Form 278e PDF U S Office of Government Ethics Report July 15 2015 Archived from the original PDF on July 23 2015 Retrieved December 21 2023 via Bloomberg Businessweek Rappeport Alan May 11 2016 Donald Trump Breaks With Recent History by Not Releasing Tax Returns The New York Times Retrieved July 19 2016 Qiu Linda October 5 2016 Pence s False claim that Trump hasn t broken tax return promise PolitiFact Retrieved April 29 2020 Isidore Chris Sahadi Jeanne February 26 2016 Trump says he can t release tax returns because of audits CNN Retrieved March 1 2023 de Vogue Ariane February 22 2021 Supreme Court allows release of Trump tax returns to NY prosecutor CNN Retrieved September 14 2022 Gresko Jessica February 22 2021 Supreme Court won t halt turnover of Trump s tax records AP News Retrieved October 2 2021 Eder Steve Twohey Megan October 10 2016 Donald Trump Acknowledges Not Paying Federal Income Taxes for Years The New York Times Retrieved October 2 2021 Schmidt Kiersten Andrews Wilson December 19 2016 A Historic Number of Electors Defected and Most Were Supposed to Vote for Clinton The New York Times Retrieved January 31 2017 Desilver Drew December 20 2016 Trump s victory another example of how Electoral College wins are bigger than popular vote ones Pew Research Center Retrieved October 2 2021 Crockett Zachary November 11 2016 Donald Trump will be the only US president ever with no political or military experience Vox Retrieved January 3 2017 Phillips Amber November 9 2016 Republicans are poised to grasp the holy grail of governance The Washington Post Retrieved October 2 2021 Blau Max McKirdy Euan Yan Holly November 11 2016 Protesters target Trump buildings in massive street rallies CNN Retrieved January 21 2025 Mele Christopher Correal Annie November 9 2016 Not Our President Protests Spread After Donald Trump s Election The New York Times Retrieved May 10 2024 Przybyla Heidi M Schouten Fredreka January 21 2017 At 2 6 million strong Women s Marches crush expectations USA Today Retrieved January 22 2017 Quigley Aidan January 25 2017 All of Trump s executive actions so far Politico Retrieved January 28 2017 Geewax Marilyn January 20 2018 Trump Has Revealed Assumptions About Handling Presidential Wealth Businesses NPR News Retrieved October 2 2021 Donald Trump A list of potential conflicts of interest BBC News April 18 2017 Retrieved October 2 2021 Yourish Karen Buchanan Larry January 12 2017 It Falls Short in Every Respect Ethics Experts Pan Trump s Conflicts Plan The New York Times Retrieved September 3 2024 Venook Jeremy August 9 2017 Trump s Interests vs America s Dubai Edition The Atlantic Retrieved October 2 2021 Stone Peter July 19 2019 How Trump s businesses are booming with lobbyists donors and governments The Guardian Retrieved November 20 2024 In Focus The Emoluments Clauses of the U S Constitution PDF Congressional Research Service Report August 19 2020 Retrieved October 2 2021 LaFraniere Sharon January 25 2018 Lawsuit on Trump Emoluments Violations Gains Traction in Court The New York Times Retrieved January 25 2018 de Vogue Ariane Cole Devan January 25 2021 Supreme Court dismisses emoluments cases against Trump CNN Retrieved September 14 2022 Van Dam Andrew January 8 2021 Trump will have the worst jobs record in modern U S history It s not just the pandemic The Washington Post Retrieved October 2 2021 Smialek Jeanna June 8 2020 The U S Entered a Recession in February The New York Times Retrieved June 10 2020 Long Heather December 15 2017 The final GOP tax bill is complete Here s what is in it The Washington Post Retrieved July 31 2021 Andrews Wilson Parlapiano Alicia December 15 2017 What s in the Final Republican Tax Bill The New York Times Retrieved December 22 2017 Gale William G February 14 2020 Did the 2017 tax cut the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act pay for itself Brookings Institution Retrieved July 31 2021 Long Heather Stein Jeff October 25 2019 The U S deficit hit 984 billion in 2019 soaring during Trump era The Washington Post Retrieved June 10 2020 Sloan Allan Podkul Cezary January 14 2021 Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big Even Before the Pandemic That It ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years ProPublica Retrieved October 3 2021 Bliss Laura November 16 2020 How Trump s 1 Trillion Infrastructure Pledge Added Up Bloomberg News Retrieved December 29 2021 Burns Dan January 8 2021 Trump ends his term like a growing number of Americans out of a job Reuters Retrieved May 10 2024 Parker Ashley Davenport Coral May 26 2016 Donald Trump s Energy Plan More Fossil Fuels and Fewer Rules The New York Times Retrieved October 3 2021 Samenow Jason March 22 2016 Donald Trump s unsettling nonsense on weather and climate The Washington Post Retrieved October 3 2021 Lemire Jonathan Madhani Aamer Weissert Will Knickmeyer Ellen September 15 2020 Trump spurns science on climate Don t think science knows AP News Retrieved May 11 2024 Plumer Brad Davenport Coral December 28 2019 Science Under Attack How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work The New York Times Retrieved May 11 2024 Trump proposes cuts to climate and clean energy programs National Geographic Society May 3 2019 Retrieved November 24 2023 Dennis Brady November 7 2017 As Syria embraces Paris climate deal it s the United States against the world The Washington Post Retrieved May 28 2018 Gardner Timothy December 3 2019 Senate confirms Brouillette former Ford lobbyist as energy secretary Reuters Retrieved December 15 2019 Brown Matthew September 15 2020 Trump s fossil fuel agenda gets pushback from federal judges AP News Retrieved October 3 2021 Lipton Eric October 5 2020 The Coal Industry Is Back Trump Proclaimed It Wasn t The New York Times Retrieved October 3 2021 Subramaniam Tara January 30 2021 From building the wall to bringing back coal Some of Trump s more notable broken promises CNN Retrieved October 3 2021 Popovich Nadja Albeck Ripka Livia Pierre Louis Kendra January 20 2021 The Trump Administration Rolled Back More Than 100 Environmental Rules Here s the Full List The New York Times Retrieved December 21 2023 Thompson Frank W October 9 2020 Six ways Trump has sabotaged the Affordable Care Act Brookings Institution Retrieved January 3 2022 Arnsdorf Isaac DePillis Lydia Lind Dara Song Lisa Syed Moiz Osei Zipporah November 25 2020 Tracking the Trump Administration s Midnight Regulations ProPublica Retrieved January 3 2022 Baker Cayli December 15 2020 The Trump administration s major environmental deregulations Brookings Institution Retrieved January 29 2022 Grunwald Michael April 10 2017 Trump s Secret Weapon Against Obama s Legacy Politico Magazine Retrieved January 29 2022 Lipton Eric Appelbaum Binyamin March 5 2017 Leashes Come Off Wall Street Gun Sellers Polluters and More The New York Times Retrieved January 29 2022 Trump Era Trend Industries Protest Regulations Rolled Back A Dozen Examples The New York Times March 5 2017 Retrieved January 29 2022 via DocumentCloud Roundup Trump Era Agency Policy in the Courts Institute for Policy Integrity April 25 2022 Retrieved January 8 2022 Kodjak Alison November 9 2016 Trump Can Kill Obamacare With Or Without Help From Congress NPR News Retrieved January 12 2017 Davis Julie Hirschfeld Pear Robert January 20 2017 Trump Issues Executive Order Scaling Back Parts of Obamacare The New York Times Retrieved January 23 2017 Luhby Tami October 13 2017 What s in Trump s health care executive order CNN Retrieved October 14 2017 Nelson Louis July 18 2017 Trump says he plans to let Obamacare fail Politico Retrieved September 29 2017 Young Jeffrey August 31 2017 Trump Ramps Up Obamacare Sabotage With Huge Cuts To Enrollment Programs HuffPost Retrieved September 29 2017 Stolberg Sheryl Gay June 26 2020 Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Affordable Care Act The New York Times Retrieved October 3 2021 Katkov Mark June 26 2020 Obamacare Must Fall Trump Administration Tells Supreme Court NPR News Retrieved September 29 2021 Rappeport Alan Haberman Maggie January 22 2020 Trump Opens Door to Cuts to Medicare and Other Entitlement Programs The New York Times Retrieved January 24 2020 Mann Brian October 29 2020 Opioid Crisis Critics Say Trump Fumbled Response To Another Deadly Epidemic NPR News Retrieved December 13 2020 Abortion How do Trump and Biden s policies compare BBC News September 9 2020 Retrieved July 17 2023 de Vogue Ariane November 15 2016 Trump Same sex marriage is settled but Roe v Wade can be changed CNN Retrieved November 30 2016 O Hara Mary Emily March 30 2017 LGBTQ Advocates Say Trump s New Executive Order Makes Them Vulnerable to Discrimination NBC News Retrieved July 30 2017
