Donald Trump – U.S. Presidency, Family & Businesses – Biography
Who Is Donald Trump?
Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States; he took office January 20, 2017. Previously, he was a real estate mogul, and a former reality TV star.
Born in Queens, New York, in 1946, Trump became involved in large, profitable building projects in Manhattan. In 1980, he opened the Grand Hyatt New York, which made him the city's best-known developer.
In 2004, Trump began starring in the hit NBC reality series The Apprentice, which also spawned the offshoot The Celebrity Apprentice. Trump turned his attention to politics, and in 2015 he announced his candidacy for president of the United States on the Republican ticket.
After winning a majority of the primaries and caucuses, Trump became the official Republican candidate for president on July 19, 2016. That November, Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States, after defeating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York.
According to a September 2017 Forbes estimate, Donald Trumps net worth is $3.1 billion. Of that, $1.6 billion is in New York real estate; $570 million is in golf clubs and resorts; $500 million is in non-New York real estate; $290 million is in cash and personal assets; and $200 million is in brand businesses. Thats down from $3.7 billion in 2016, according to Fortune, mostly due to declining New York real estate values.
Over the years, Trumps net worth has been a subject of public debate. In 1990, Trump asserted his own net worth in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. However the real estate market was in decline, reducing the value of and income from Trump's empire; a Forbes magazine investigation into his assets revealed that his existing debt likely brought the number closer to $500 million.
In any event, the Trump Organization required a massive infusion of loans to keep it from collapsing, a situation which raised questions as to whether the corporation could survive bankruptcy. Some observers saw Trump's decline as symbolic of many of the business, economic and social excesses that had arisen in the 1980s.
Donald Trump eventually managed to climb back from a reported deficit of nearly $900 million, claiming to have reached a zenith of more than $2 billion. However, independent sources again questioned his math, estimating his worth at something closer to $500 million by 1997.
Over the course of his 2016 presidential run, Trumps net worth was questioned and he courted controversy after repeatedly refusing to release his tax returns while they were being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. He did not release his tax returns before the November election the first time a major party candidate had not released such information to the public since Richard Nixon in 1972.
Donald Trump attends the 'All Star Celebrity Apprentice' finale in2013 in New York City. (Photo: Michael Stewart/WireImage)
Donald Trump was raised Presbyterian by his mother, and he identifies as a mainline Protestant.
The fourth of five children, Donald Trumps parents were Frederick C. and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. Frederick Trump was a builder and real estate developer who specialized in constructing and operating middle-income apartments in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn.
Mary MacLeod immigrated from Tong, Scotland, in 1929 at the age of 17. She married Fred Trump in 1936, and the couple settled in Jamaica, Queens, a neighborhood that was, at the time, filled with Western European immigrants.
In the 1950s the Trumps wealth increased with the postwar real estate boom, and Mary became a New York socialite and philanthropist. Fred died in 1999, and Mary passed away the following year.
Donald J. Trump has had three wives and is currently married to former Slovenian model Melania Trump(ne Knauss), over 23 years his junior. In January 2005, the couple married in a highly-publicized and lavish wedding.
Among the many celebrity guests at the wedding were Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. Melania gave birth to their son, Barron William Trump, in March 2006.
In 1977, Trump married his first wife Ivana Trump, (ne Zelnickova Winklmayr) a New York fashion model who had been an alternate on the 1972 Czech Olympic Ski Team. After the 1977 birth of the couple's first of three children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivana Trump was named vice president in charge of design in the Trump Organization and played a major role in supervising the renovation of the Commodore and the Plaza Hotel.
The couple had two more children together Ivanka Trump (born 1981) and Eric Trump (born 1984) and went through a highly publicized divorce which was finalized in 1992.
In 1993 Trump married his second wife, Marla Maples, an actress with whom he had been involved for some time and already had a daughter, Tiffany Trump (born in 1993).
Trump would ultimately file for a highly publicized divorce from Maples in 1997, which became final in June 1999. A prenuptial agreement allotted $2 million to Maples.
Trump's sons Donald Jr. and Eric work as executive vice presidents for The Trump Organization, and took over the family business while their father serves as president.
Trump's daughter Ivanka was also an executive vice president of The Trump Organization, but left the business and her own fashion label to join her father's administration and become an unpaid assistant to the president. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is also a senior adviser to President Trump.
Donald Trump gives two thumbs up to the crowd on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Donald was an energetic, assertive child. His parents sent him to the New York Military Academy at age 13, hoping the discipline of the school would channel his energy in a positive manner.
Trump did well at the academy, both socially and academically, rising to become a star athlete and student leader by the time he graduated in 1964.
He then entered Fordham University and two years later transferred to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics.
During his years at college, Trump worked at his fathers real estate business during the summer. He also secured education deferments for thedraftfor theVietnam Warand ultimately a 1-Y medical deferment after he graduated.
Trump began his political career by seeking the nomination for the Reform Party for the 2000 presidential race and withdrew; he again publicly announced he would be running for president in the 2012 election.
However, it wasnt until the 2016 election that Trump became the official Republican nominee for president and, defying polls and media projections, won the majority of electoral college votes in a stunning victory on November 8, 2016.
Despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes, Trump's electoral win 306 electoral college votes to Clinton's 232 clinched his victory as the 45th president of the United States.
After one of the most contentious presidential races in U.S. history, Trump's rise to the office of president was considered a resounding rejection of establishment politics by blue-collar and working-class Americans.
In his victory speech, Trump said: I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans." About his supporters, he said: "As Ive said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their families.
On July 21, 2016, Trump accepted the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In a speech lasting one hour and 15 minutes, one of the longest in recent history, Trump outlined the issues he would tackle as president, including violence in America, the economy, immigration, trade, terrorism, and the appointment of Supreme Courtjustices.
On immigration, he said: We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.
He also promised supporters that he would renegotiate trade deals, reduce taxes and government regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare), defend Second Amendment gun rights, and rebuild our depleted military, asking the countries the U.S. is protecting "to pay their fair share."
On October 7, 2016, just two days before the second presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, the Republican presidential nominee was embroiled in another scandal when theWashington Post released a 2005 recording in which he lewdly described kissing and groping women, and trying to have sex with then-married television personality Nancy ODell.
The three-minute recording captured Trump speaking to Billy Bush, co-anchor of Access Hollywood, as they prepared to meet soap opera actress Arianne Zucker for a segment of the show.
"Ive gotta use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her, Trump said in the recording which was caught on a microphone that had not been turned off. You know Im automatically attracted to beautiful I just start kissing them. Its like a magnet. Just kiss. I dont even wait. And when youre a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
He also said that because of his celebrity status he could grab women by their genitals. In response, Trump released a statement saying: This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.
Trump later posted a videotaped apology on Facebook in which he said: Ive never said Im a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that Im not. Ive said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words dont reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.
The backlash was immediate with some top Republicans, including Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Mike Crapo, Shelley Moore Capito and Martha Roby, withdrawing their support for Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly told fellow GOP lawmakers that he would not campaign with or defend the presidential candidate.
Some GOP critics also called for Trump to withdraw from the race, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Trump remained defiant, tweeting that he would stay in the race.
Around the same time as the video leak, numerous women began speaking publicly about their past experiences with Trump, alleging he had either sexually assaulted or harassed them based on their looks.
Throughout the election, Trump vehemently denied allegations he had a relationship with Russian PresidentVladimir Putin and was tied to the hacking of the DNC emails.
In January 2017, a U.S. intelligence report prepared by the CIA, FBI and NSA concluded that Putin had ordered a campaign to influence the U.S. election. Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," the report said.
Prior to the release of the report, President-elect Trump had cast doubt on Russian interference and the intelligence communitys assessment. Trump received an intelligence briefing on the matter, and in his first press conference as president-elect on January 11, he acknowledged Russias interference.
However, in subsequent comments he again refused to condemn Russia for such activity, notably saying on multiple occasions that he believed Putin's denials.
In March 2018, the Trump administration formally acknowledged the charges by issuing sanctions on 19 Russians for interference in the 2016 presidential election and alleged cyberattacks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin delivered the announcement, with thepresident remaining silent on the matter.
In July, days before President Trump was to meet with Putin in Finland, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced additional charges against12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
On January 20, 2017, Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts. Trump took the oath of office placing his hand on the Bible that was used at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration and his own family Bible, which was presented to him by his mother in 1955 when he graduated from Sunday school at his family's Presbyterian church.
In his inaugural speech on January 20th, Trump sent a populist message that he would put the American people above politics. What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people, he said. January 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.
He went on to paint a bleak picture of an America that had failed many of its citizens, describing families trapped in poverty, an ineffective education system, and crime, drugs and gangs. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now," he said.
The day after Trump's inauguration, millions of protesters demonstrated across the United States and around the world. The Women's March on Washington drew over half a million people to protest President Trump's stance on a variety issues ranging from immigration to environmental protection.
Activists and celebrities taking part in the protests includedGloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Madonna,Cher, Ashley Judd, Scarlett Johansson, America Ferrera, Alicia Keys and Janelle Mone. The president tweeted in response:
The first 100 days of Trumps presidency lasted from January 20, 2017 until April 29, 2017. In the first days of his presidency, President Trump issued a number of back-to-back executive orders to make good on some of his campaign promises, as well as several orders aimed at rolling back policies and regulations that were put into place during the Obama administration.
Several of Trumps key policies that got rolling during Trumps first 100 days in office include his Supreme Court nomination; steps toward building a wall on the Mexico border; a travel ban for several predominantly Muslim countries; the first moves to dismantle the Affordable Care Act; and the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
In addition, Trump signed orders to implement a federal hiring freeze, withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and reinstate the Mexico City policy that bans federal funding of nongovernmental organizations abroad that promote or perform abortions.
He signed an order to scale back financial regulation under the Dodd-Frank Act, created by the Obama administration and passed by Congress after the financial crisis of 2008. And he called for a lifetime foreign-lobbying ban for members of his administration and a five-year ban for all other lobbying.
On March 16, 2017, the president released his proposed budget. The budget outlined his plans for increased spending for the military, veterans affairs and national security, including building a wall on the border with Mexico.
It also made drastic cuts to many government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department, as well as the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Community Development Block Grant program which supports Meals on Wheels.
On January 31, 2017, President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The 49-year-old conservative judge was appointed by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver.
Judge Gorsuch was educated at Columbia, Harvard and Oxford and clerked for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. The nomination came after Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia, was denied a confirmation hearing by Senate Republicans.
As Gorsuch's legal philosophy was considered to be similar to Scalia's, the choice drew strong praise from the conservative side of the aisle. "Millions of voters said this was the single most important issue for them when they voted for me for president," President Trump said. "I am a man of my word. Today I am keeping another promise to the American people by nominating Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court."
After Gorsuch gave three days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, the Senate convened on April 6 to advance his nomination. Democrats mostly held firm to deny the 60 votes necessary to proceed, resulting in the first successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.
But Republicans quickly countered with another historic move, invoking the "nuclear option" to lower the threshold for advancing Supreme Court nominations from 60 votes to a simple majority of 50. On April 7, Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate to become the 113th justice of the Supreme Court.
The following year, President Trump had another opportunity to continue the rightward push of the Supreme Court with the retirement of Justice Kennedy. On July 9, 2018, he nominated Brett Kavanaugh, another textualist and orginalist in the mold of Scalia. Democrats vowed to fight the nomination, and Kavanaugh was nearly derailed by accusations of sexual assault, before earning confirmation in a close vote that October.
Trump issued an executive order to build a wall at the United States border with Mexico. In his first televised interview as president, President Trump said the initial construction of the wall would be funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, but that Mexico would reimburse the U.S. 100 percent in a plan to be negotiated and might include a suggested import tax on Mexican goods.
In response to the new administration's stance on a border wall, Mexican president Enrique Pea Nieto cancelled a planned visit to meet with President Trump. "Mexico does not believe in walls," the Mexican president said in a video statement. "I've said time again; Mexico will not pay for any wall."
After funding for the wall failed to materialize, from either Mexico or Congress, Trump in April 2018 announced that he wouldreinforce security along the U.S. border with Mexico by using American troops because of the "horrible, unsafe laws" that left the country vulnerable. The following day, the president signed a proclamation that directed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Department of Homeland Security said that the deployment would be in coordination with governors, that the troops would "support federal law enforcement personnel, including [Customs and Border Protection]," and that federal immigration authorities would "direct enforcement efforts."
In December 2018, shortly before a newly elected Democratic majority was set to take control of the House, Trump announced he would not sign a bill to fund the government unless Congress allocated $5.7 billion toward building his long-promised border wall. With Democrats refusing to give in to his demand, a partial government shutdown ensued for a record 35 days, until all sides agreed to another attempt at striking a compromise.
On February 14, 2019, one day before the deadline, Congress passed a $333 billion spending package that allocated $1.375 billion for 55 miles of steel-post fencing. After indicating that he would sign the bill, the President made good on his threat to declare a national emergency the following day, enabling him to funnel $3.6 billion slated for military construction projects toward building the wall.
In response, a coalition of 16 states filed a lawsuit that challenged Trump's power to circumvent Congress on this issue.
"Contrary to the will of Congress, the president has used the pretext of a manufactured 'crisis' of unlawful immigration to declare a national emergency and redirect federal dollars appropriated for drug interdiction, military construction and law enforcement initiatives toward building a wall on the United States-Mexico border," the lawsuit said.
After the House voted for a resolution to overturn the national emergency declaration in late February, the Senate followed suit on March 14 when 12 Republican senatorsjoined a united Democratic side to vote for the resolution. Trump promptly issued the first veto of his presidency the following day, calling the resolution a "vote against reality."
As part of attempts to seal the U.S. border with Mexico, the Trump administration in 2018 began following through on a "zero-tolerance" policy to prosecute anybody found to have crossed the border illegally. As children were legally not allowed to be detained with their parents, this meant that they were to be held separately as family cases wound through immigration courts.
A furor ensued after reports surfaced that nearly 2,000 children had been separated from their parents over a six-week period that ended in May 2018, compounded by photos of toddlers crying in cages. President Trump initially deflected blame for the situation, insisting it resulted from the efforts of predecessors and political opponents."The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda," he tweeted.
The president ultimately caved to pressure from the bad PR, and on June 20 he signed an executive order thatdirected the Department of Homeland Security to keep families together.
"I didnt like the sight or the feeling of families being separated," he said, adding that it remained important to have "zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally" and for Congress to find a permanent solution to the problem. In the meantime, the DHS essentially revived the "catch-and-release" system that the zero-tolerance policy was meant to eradicate, while dealing with the logistics of reuniting families.
President Trump signed one of his most controversial executive orders on January 27, 2017, at the Pentagon, calling for "extreme vetting" to "keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America." The president's executive order was put into effect immediately, and refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries traveling to the U.S. were detained at U.S. airports.
The order called for a ban on immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen for at least 90 days, temporarily suspended the entry of refugees for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, President Trump also said he would give priority to Christian refugees trying to gain entry into the United States.
After facing multiple legal hurdles, President Trump signed a revised executive order on March 6, 2017,calling for a 90-day ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries including Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Iraq, which was included in the original executive order, was removed from the list.
Travelers from the six listed countries, who hold green cards or have valid visas as of the signing of the order, will not be affected. Religious minorities would not get special preference, as was outlined in the original order, and an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees was reduced to 120 days.
On March 15, just hours before the revised ban was going to be put into effect, Derrick Watson, a federal judge in Hawaii, issued a temporary nationwide restraining order in a ruling that stated the executive order did not prove that a ban would protect the country from terrorism and that it was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose. At a rally in Nashville, President Trump responded to the ruling, saying: "This is, in the opinion of many, an unprecedented judicial overreach.
Judge Theodore D. Chuang of Maryland also blocked the ban the following day, and in subsequent months, the ban was impeded in decisions handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals once again.
However, on June 26, 2017, Trump won a partial victory when the Supreme Court announced it was allowing the controversial ban to go into effect for foreign nationals who lacked a "bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States." The court agreed to hear oral arguments for the case in October, but with the 90-to-120-day timeline in place for the administration to conduct its reviews, it was believed the case would be rendered moot by that point.
On September 24, 2017, Trump issued a new presidential proclamation, which permanently bans travel to the United States for most citizens from seven countries. Most were on the original list, including Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, while the new order included Chad, North Korea and some citizens of Venezuela (certain government officials and their families). The tweak did little to pacify critics, who argued that the order was still heavily biased toward Islam.
The fact that Trump has added North Korea with few visitors to the U.S. and a few government officials from Venezuela doesnt obfuscate the real fact that the administrations order is still a Muslim ban, said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
On October 10, the Supreme Court cancelled a planned hearing on an appeal of the original travel ban. On October 17, the day before the order was to take effect, Judge Watson of Hawaii issued a nationwide order freezing the Trump administrations new travel ban, writing that the order was a poor fit for the issues regarding the sharing of public-safety and terrorism-related information that the president identifies.
On December 4, 2017, the Supreme Court allowed the third version of the Trump administrations travel ban to go into effect despite the ongoing legal challenges. The courts orders urged appeals courts to determineas quickly as possible whether theban was lawful.
Under the ruling, the administration could fully enforce its new restrictions on travel from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim. Citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, along with some groups of people from Venezuela, would be unable to unable to emigrate to the United States permanently, with many barred from also working, studying or vacationing in the country.
On June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the president's travel ban by a 5-4 vote.Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Trump had the executive authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration, regardless of his previous statements about Islam. In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the outcome was equivalent to that of Korematsu v. United States, which permitted the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
The Valentine's Day 2018 shooting atMarjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left a total of 17 students and faculty dead, sparked a strong response from President Trump.
He ordered the Justice Department to issue regulations banning bump stocks, and suggested he was willing to consider a range of measures, from strengthening background checks to raising the minimumage for buying rifles. He also backed an NRA-fueled proposal for arming teachers, which drew backlash from many in the profession.
The president remained invested in the issue even as the usual cycle of outrage began diminishing: In a televised February 28 meeting with lawmakers, he called for gun control legislation that would expand background checks to gun shows and internet transactions, secure schools and restrict sales for some young adults.
At one point he called outPennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey for being "afraid of the NRA," and at another he suggested thatauthorities should seize guns from mentally ill or other potentially dangerous peoplewithout first going to court. "I like taking the guns early," he said. "Take the guns first, go through due process second."
His stances seemingly stunned the Republican lawmakers at the meeting, as well as the NRA, which previously considered the president as a strong supporter. However, within a few days, Trump was walking back his proposal to raise the age limit and mainly pushing for arming select teachers.
In early August 2017, intelligence experts confirmed that North Korea successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that fits inside its missiles, putting it one step closer to becoming a nuclear power. Around the same time, the North Korean state news agency said they were "examining the operational plan" to strike areas around the U.S. territory of Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic missiles.
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Donald Trump - U.S. Presidency, Family & Businesses - Biography