Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.
Trump was born and raised in Queens, a borough of New York City. He attended Fordham University for two years and received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He became president of his father's real-estate business in 1971, renamed it The Trump Organization, and expanded its operations to building or renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies. He owned the Miss Universe brand of beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015. He produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality television series, from 2003 to 2015. As of April 2020, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $2.1 billion.
Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in a surprise victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, although he lost the popular vote. He became the oldest first-term U.S. president, and the first without prior military or government service. His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist.
During his presidency, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, citing security concerns; after legal challenges, the Supreme Court upheld the policy's third revision. He enacted a tax-cut package for individuals and businesses, rescinding the individual health insurance mandate penalty. He appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Trump has pursued an America First agenda, withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He imposed import tariffs which triggered a trade war with China, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria. Trump met three times with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, but talks on denuclearization broke down in 2019. Trump reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic; he minimized the threat, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, and promoted false information about unproven treatments and the availability of testing. He is seeking a second term as the Republican nominee in the 2020 presidential election.
A special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller found that Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election under the belief that it would be politically advantageous, but did not find sufficient evidence to press charges of criminal conspiracy or coordination with Russia. Mueller also investigated Trump for obstruction of justice, and his report neither indicted nor exonerated Trump on that offense. After Trump solicited an investigation by Ukraine of the political rival Joe Biden, the House of Representatives impeached him in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted him of both charges in February 2020.
Personal life
Early life
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens, New York City. His father was Frederick Christ Trump, a Bronx-born real estate developer whose parents were German immigrants. His mother was Scottish-born housewife Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. Trump grew up in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens and attended the Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school. In 1964, he enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics. Profiles of Trump published in The New York Times in 1973 and 1976 erroneously reported that he had graduated first in his class at Wharton, but he had never made the school's honor roll. In 2015, Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened Fordham University and the New York Military Academy with legal action if they released Trump's academic records.
Military deferment
While in college, Trump obtained four student draft deferments. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination, and in July 1968 a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was medically deferred and classified 1-Y (unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency). In 1972, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, which permanently disqualified him from service. Trump said in 2015 the deferment was for a bone spur in his foot, but could not remember which foot.
Family
Parents and siblings
Fred Trump started working in real estate with his mother Elizabeth when he was 15, after his father Friedrich had died in the 1918 flu pandemic. By 1926, their company, "E. Trump & Son", was active in the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. It would grow to build and sell tens of thousands of houses, barracks, and apartments. Fred claimed to be Swedish amid the anti-German sentiment sparked by World War II; Donald Trump also claimed Swedish heritage until 1990. Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod was born in Scotland. Fred and Mary were married in 1936 and raised their family in Queens. Trump grew up with three elder siblings – Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth – and younger brother Robert.
Wives and children
In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They have three children, Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivanka (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984), and ten grandchildren. Ivana became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992, following Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples. Maples and Trump married in 1993 and had one daughter, Tiffany (born 1993). They were divorced in 1999, and Tiffany was raised by Marla in California. In 2005, Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (born 2006). Melania gained U.S. citizenship in 2006.
Religion
Trump identifies as Presbyterian. He went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church. The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale, ministered to Trump's family until Peale's death in 1993. Trump has described Peale as a mentor. In 2015, after Trump said he attends Marble, the church publicly stated he "is not an active member" of the church. In November 2019, Trump appointed his personal pastor, televangelist Paula White, to the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Health and lifestyle
Trump abstains from alcohol. He says he has never smoked cigarettes or cannabis. He likes fast food and French cuisine. He has said he prefers three to four hours of sleep per night. He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", although he 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 December 2015, Harold Bornstein, who had been Trump's personal physician since 1980, wrote that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency" in a letter released by the Trump campaign. In May 2018, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter and that three agents of Trump had removed his medical records in February 2017 without due authorization.
In January 2018, White House physician Ronny Jackson said Trump was in excellent health and that his cardiac assessment revealed no issues. Several outside cardiologists commented that Trump's 2018 LDL cholesterol level of 143 did not indicate excellent health. In February 2019, after a new examination, White House physician Sean Conley said Trump was in "very good health overall", although he was clinically obese. His 2019 coronary CT calcium scan score indicates he suffers from a form of coronary artery disease common for white men of his age.
In June 2020, Conley released a memorandum saying "the data indicates that the President remains healthy." The memorandum was not the usual report issued after the annual physical exam. It summarized medical appointments that had taken place between November 2019 and 2020.
Wealth
In 1982, Trump was listed on the initial Forbes list of wealthy individuals as having a share of his family's estimated $200 million net worth. His financial losses in the 1980s caused him to be dropped from the list between 1990 and 1995. In its 2020 billionaires ranking, Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $2.1 billion (1,001st in the world, 275th in the U.S.) making him one of the richest politicians in American history and the first billionaire American president. During the three years since Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth declined 31% and his ranking fell 138 spots. When he filed mandatory financial disclosure forms with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in July 2015, Trump claimed a net worth of about $10 billion; however, FEC figures cannot corroborate this estimate because they only show each of his largest buildings as being worth over $50 million, yielding total assets worth more than $1.4 billion and debt over $265 million. Trump said in a 2007 deposition, "My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”
Journalist Jonathan Greenberg reported in April 2018 that Trump, using the pseudonym "John Barron" and claiming to be a Trump Organization official, called him in 1984 to falsely assert that he owned "in excess of ninety percent" of the Trump family's business, in an effort to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Greenberg also wrote that Forbes had vastly overestimated Trump's wealth and wrongly included him on the Forbes 400 rankings of 1982, 1983, and 1984.
Trump has often said he began his career with "a small loan of one million dollars" from his father, and that he had to pay it back with interest. In October 2018, The New York Times reported that Trump "was a millionaire by age 8", borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely failed to reimburse him, and had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime. According to the report, Trump and his family committed tax fraud, which a lawyer for Trump denied. The tax department of New York said it is "vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation" into it. Analyses by The Economist and The Washington Post have concluded that Trump's investments underperformed the stock market. Forbes estimated in October 2018 that the value of Trump's personal brand licensing business had declined by 88% since 2015, to $3 million.
Trump's tax returns from 1985 to 1994 show net losses totaling $1.17 billion over the ten-year period, in contrast to his claims about his financial health and business abilities. The New York Times reported that "year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer," and Trump's "core business losses in 1990 and 1991 – more than $250 million each year – were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years". In 1995 his reported losses were $915.7 million.
Business career
Real estate
While a student at Wharton and after graduating in 1968, Trump worked at his father Fred's real estate company, Trump Management, which owned middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs. In 1971, he became president of the company and began using The Trump Organization as an umbrella brand. The business had previously used the names Fred C. Trump Organization, Fred Trump Organization, and Trump Organization, but had not had a single formal name. It was registered as a corporation in 1981.
Manhattan 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 by Fred Trump, who also joined Hyatt in guaranteeing $70 million in bank construction financing. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and that same year, Trump obtained rights to develop Trump Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The building houses the headquarters of the Trump Organization and was Trump's primary residence until 2019.
In 1988, Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan with a loan of $425 million from a consortium of banks. Two years later, the hotel filed for bankruptcy protection, and a reorganization plan was approved in 1992. In 1995, Trump lost the hotel to Citibank and investors from Singapore and Saudi Arabia, who assumed $300 million of the debt.
In 1996, Trump acquired a vacant 71-story skyscraper at 40 Wall Street. After an extensive renovation, the high-rise was renamed the Trump Building. In the early 1990s, Trump 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, Trump sold most of his interest in the project to Asian investors who were able to finance completion of the project, Riverside South.
Palm Beach estate
In 1985, Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump used a wing of the estate as a home, while converting the remainder into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues. On September 27, 2019, Trump declared Mar-a-Lago his primary residence.
Atlantic City casinos
In 1984, Trump opened Harrah's at Trump Plaza hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with financing from the Holiday Corporation, who also managed the operation. Gambling had been legalized there in 1977 in an effort to revitalize the once-popular seaside destination. The property's poor financial results worsened tensions between Holiday and Trump, who paid Holiday $70 million in May 1986 to take sole control of the property. Earlier, Trump had also acquired a partially completed building in Atlantic City from the Hilton Corporation for $320 million. Upon its completion in 1985, that hotel and casino was called Trump Castle. Trump's then-wife Ivana managed it until 1988.
Trump acquired a third casino in Atlantic City, the Taj Mahal, in 1988 in a highly leveraged transaction. It was financed with $675 million in junk bonds and completed at a cost of $1.1 billion, opening in April 1990. The project went bankrupt the following year, and the reorganization left Trump with only half his initial ownership stake and required him to pledge personal guarantees of future performance. Facing "enormous debt", he gave up control of his money-losing airline, Trump Shuttle, and sold his 282-foot (86 m) mega yacht, the Trump Princess, which had been indefinitely docked in Atlantic City while leased to his casinos for use by wealthy gamblers.
In 1995, Trump founded Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (THCR), which assumed ownership of Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, and the Trump Casino in Gary, Indiana. THCR purchased the Taj Mahal in 1996 and underwent successive bankruptcies in 2004, 2009, and 2014, leaving Trump with only ten percent ownership. He remained chairman of THCR until 2009.
Golf courses
The Trump Organization began acquiring and constructing golf courses in 1999. It owned 16 golf courses and resorts worldwide and operated another two as of December 2016. His 2015 golf and resort revenue amounted to $382 million.
From his inauguration until the end of 2019, Trump spent around one of every five days at one of his golf clubs.
Branding and licensing
After the Trump Organization's financial losses in the early 1990s, it refocused its business on branding and licensing the Trump name for projects owned and operated by other people and companies. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, it expanded this branding and management business to hotel towers located around the world, including Chicago; Las Vegas; Washington, D.C.; Panama City; Toronto; and Vancouver. There were also Trump-branded buildings in Dubai, Honolulu, Istanbul, Manila, Mumbai, and Indonesia.
The Trump name has also been licensed for various consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, adult learning courses, and home furnishings. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, there are more than fifty licensing or management deals involving Trump's name, which have generated at least $59 million in yearly revenue for his companies. By 2018 only two consumer goods companies continued to license his name.
Legal affairs and bankruptcies
Fixer Roy Cohn served as Trump's lawyer and mentor in the 1970s and 1980s, with a 13-year relationship. According to Trump, they were so close that Cohn sometimes waived fees due to their friendship. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump counter-sue the United States government for $100 million over its charges that Trump's properties had racial discriminatory practices; in 1975 an agreement was struck for Trump's properties to change their practices. It was Cohn who introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone's services to deal with the federal government.
As of April 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, according to a running tally by USA Today. As of 2016, he or one of his companies had been the plaintiff in 1,900 cases and the defendant in 1,450.
While Trump 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 Trump's shares in the properties.
During the 1980s, more than 70 banks had lent Trump $4 billion, but in the aftermath of his corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s, most major banks declined to lend to him, with only Deutsche Bank still willing to lend money.
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. In response, Trump sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chairman Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures. In May, DC District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled that Mazars must comply with the subpoena, and judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District Court of New York ruled that the banks must also comply. Trump's attorneys appealed the rulings, arguing that Congress was attempting to usurp the "exercise of law-enforcement authority that the Constitution reserves to the executive branch".
Side ventures
In September 1983, Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. After the 1985 season, the league folded largely due to Trump's strategy of moving games to a fall schedule where they competed with the NFL for audience, and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit against the organization.
Trump's businesses have hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall adjacent to and promoted as taking place at the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. In 1989 and 1990, Trump lent his name to the Tour de Trump cycling stage race, which was an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia.
In the late 1980s, Trump mimicked the actions of Wall Street's so-called corporate raiders, whose tactics had attracted wide public attention. Trump began to purchase significant blocks of shares in various public companies, leading some observers to think he was engaged in the practice called greenmail, or feigning the intent to acquire the companies and then pressuring management to repurchase the buyer's stake at a premium. The New York Times found that Trump initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions, but later "lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously".
In 1988, Trump purchased the defunct Eastern Air Lines shuttle, with 21 planes and landing rights in New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. He financed the purchase with $380 million from 22 banks, rebranded the operation the Trump Shuttle, and operated it until 1992. Trump failed to earn a profit with the airline and sold it to USAir.
In 1992, Trump, his siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and 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 the purpose of 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 proceeds generated by the markups were shared by the owners. The increased costs were used as justification to get state approval for increasing the rents of Trump's rent-stabilized units.
From 1996 to 2015, Trump owned all or part of 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, Trump received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work as producer of Miss Universe. After NBC and Univision dropped the pageants from their broadcasting lineups in June 2015, Trump bought NBC's share of the Miss Universe Organization and sold the entire company to the William Morris talent agency.
Trump University
In 2004, Trump co-founded a company called Trump University which sold real estate training courses priced from $1,500 to $35,000. After New York State authorities notified the company that its use of the word "university" violated state law, its name was changed to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010.
In 2013, the State of New York filed a $40 million civil suit against Trump University; the suit alleged that the company made false statements and defrauded consumers. In addition, two class actions were filed in federal court; they named Trump personally as well as his companies. Internal documents revealed that employees were instructed to use a hard-sell approach, and former employees said in depositions that Trump University had defrauded or lied to its students. Shortly after he won the presidency, Trump agreed to pay a total of $25 million to settle the three cases.
Foundation
The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a U.S.-based private foundation established in 1988 for the initial purpose of giving away proceeds from the book Trump: The Art of the Deal. In the foundation's final years its funds mostly came from donors other than Trump, who did not donate any personal funds to the charity from 2009 until 2014. The foundation gave to health care and sports-related charities, as well as conservative groups.
In 2016, The Washington Post reported that the charity had committed several potential legal and ethical violations, including alleged self-dealing and possible tax evasion. Also in 2016, the New York State Attorney General's office said the foundation appeared to be in violation of New York laws regarding charities and ordered it to immediately cease its fundraising activities in New York. Trump's team announced in late December 2016 that the foundation would be dissolved to remove "even the appearance of any conflict with [his] role as President".
In June 2018 the New York attorney general's office filed a civil suit against the foundation, Trump himself, and his adult children, asking for $2.8 million in restitution and additional penalties. In December 2018, the foundation ceased operation and disbursed all its assets to other charities. The following November, 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.
Conflicts of interest
Before being inaugurated as president, Trump moved his businesses into a revocable trust run by his eldest sons and a business associate. According to ethics experts, measures taken by Trump do not help avoid conflicts of interest as long as he continues to profit from his businesses. Because Trump would have knowledge of how his administration's policies affect his businesses, ethics experts recommend selling the businesses. Though Trump said he would eschew "new foreign deals", the Trump Organization has since pursued expansions of its operations in Dubai, Scotland, and the Dominican Republic.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed alleging that Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution, which forbids presidents from taking money from foreign governments, due to his business interests; they argue that these interests allow foreign governments to influence him. Previous presidents in the modern era have either divested their holdings or put them in blind trusts, and he is the first president to be sued over the emoluments clause. According to The Guardian, "NBC News recently calculated that representatives of at least 22 foreign governments – including some facing charges of corruption or human rights abuses such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and the Philippines – seem to have spent funds at Trump properties while he has been president." On October 21, 2019, Trump mocked the Emoluments Clause as "phony".
In 2015, Trump said he "makes a lot of money with" the Saudis and that "they pay me millions and hundreds of millions." And at a political rally, Trump said about Saudi Arabia: "They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much."
In December 2015, Trump said in a radio interview that he had a "conflict of interest" in dealing with Turkey and Turkish president Tayyip Erdoğan because of his Trump Towers Istanbul, saying "I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul and it's a tremendously successful job ... It's called Trump Towers – two towers instead of one ... I've gotten to know Turkey very well."
Media career
Books
Trump's first book, The Art of the Deal (1987), was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 48 weeks. According to The New Yorker, "The book expanded Trump's renown far beyond New York City, promoting an image of himself as a successful dealmaker and tycoon." Trump was credited as the book's co-author with Tony Schwartz, who later said he had done all the writing; this was confirmed by former Random House head Howard Kaminsky. Trump has called the book his second favorite after the Bible
Two lesser memoirs were published in 1990 and 1997, and various other books have been published under Trump's name.
WWE
Trump has had a sporadic relationship with the professional wrestling promotion WWE (World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment) since the late 1980s. He headlined the record-breaking WrestleMania 23 in 2007 and was inducted into the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. WWE co-founder and former CEO Linda McMahon later worked in his administration and election campaigns.
The Apprentice
In 2003, Trump became the co-producer and host of The Apprentice, a reality show in which Trump played the role of a powerful chief executive and contestants competed for a year of employment at the Trump Organization. Trump winnowed out contestants with his famous catchphrase "You're fired". He later co-hosted The Celebrity Apprentice, in which celebrities competed to win money for charities.
Acting
Trump has made cameo appearances in eight films and television shows and performed a song as a Green Acres character with Megan Mullally at the 57th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2005.
Talk shows
Starting in the 1990s, Trump was a guest about 24 times on the nationally syndicated Howard Stern Show. He also had his own short-form talk radio program called Trumped! (one to two minutes on weekdays) from 2004 to 2008. In 2011, he was given a weekly unpaid guest commentator spot on Fox & Friends which continued until he started his presidential candidacy in 2015.
Political career
Political activities up to 2015
Trump's political party affiliation changed numerous times. He registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987, switched to the Reform Party in 1999, the Democratic Party in 2001, and back to the Republican Party in 2009.
In 1987, Trump placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, advocating peace in Central America, accelerated nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union, and reduction of the federal budget deficit by making American allies pay "their fair share" for military defense. He ruled out running for local office but not for the presidency.
2000 presidential campaign
In 1999, Trump filed an exploratory committee to seek the nomination of the Reform Party for the 2000 presidential election. A July 1999 poll matching him against likely Republican nominee George W. Bush and likely Democratic nominee Al Gore showed Trump with seven percent support. Trump dropped out of the race in February 2000.
2012 presidential speculation
Trump speculated about running for president in the 2012 election, making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2011 and giving speeches in early primary states. In May 2011 he announced he would not run.
Trump's presidential ambitions were generally not taken seriously at the time. Before the 2016 election, The New York Times speculated that Trump "accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world" after Obama lampooned him at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April 2011.
In 2011, the superintendent of the New York Military Academy at the time, Jeffrey Coverdale, ordered the headmaster of the school, Evan Jones, to give him Trump's academic records so he could keep them secret, according to Jones. Coverdale confirmed that he had been asked to hand the records over to members of the school's board of trustees who were Trump's friends, but he refused to and instead sealed them on campus. The incident reportedly happened days after Trump demanded the release of President Barack Obama's academic records.
2013–2015
In 2013, Trump spoke at CPAC again; he railed against illegal immigration, bemoaned Obama's "unprecedented media protection", advised against harming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and suggested the government "take" Iraq's oil and use the proceeds to pay a million dollars each to families of dead soldiers. He spent over $1 million that year to research a possible 2016 candidacy.
In October 2013, New York Republicans circulated a memo suggesting Trump should run for governor of the state in 2014 against Andrew Cuomo. Trump responded that while New York had problems and its taxes were too high, he was not interested in the governorship. A February 2014 Quinnipiac poll had shown Trump losing to the more popular Cuomo by 37 points in a hypothetical election.
According to Trump's attorney Michael Cohen, in May 2015 he sent letters to the New York Military Academy and to Fordham, threatening legal action if the schools ever released Trump's grades or SAT scores; Fordham confirmed receipt of the letter as well as a phone call from a member of the Trump team.
2016 presidential campaign
Republican primaries
On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States in what Politico called a "bizarre spectacle" at Trump Tower in Manhattan. His campaign was initially not taken seriously by political analysts, but he quickly rose to the top of opinion polls.
On Super Tuesday, Trump received the most votes, and he remained the front-runner throughout the primaries. After a landslide win in Indiana on May 3, 2016 – which prompted the remaining candidates Cruz and John Kasich to suspend their presidential campaigns – RNC chairman Reince Priebus declared Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.
General election campaign
Clinton had a significant lead over Trump in national polls throughout most of 2016. In early July, her lead narrowed in national polling averages.
On July 15, 2016, Trump announced his selection of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Four days later, the two were officially nominated by the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention.
On September 26, 2016, Trump and Clinton faced off in their first presidential debate, which was held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. The second presidential debate was held at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The final presidential debate was held on October 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Trump's refusal to say whether he would accept the result of the election, regardless of the outcome, drew particular attention, with some saying it undermined democracy.
Political positions
Trump's campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.–China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, strongly enforcing immigration laws, and building a new wall along the U.S.–Mexico border. His other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement, modernizing and expediting 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 for all economic classes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. During the campaign, he also advocated a largely non-interventionist approach to foreign policy while increasing military spending, extreme vetting or banning immigrants from Muslim-majority countries to pre-empt domestic Islamic terrorism, and aggressive military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. During the campaign Trump repeatedly called NATO "obsolete".
His political positions have been described as populist, and some of his views cross party lines. For example, his economic campaign plan calls for deregulation and large reductions in income taxes, consistent with Republican Party policies, along with significant infrastructure investment, usually considered a Democratic Party policy. Trump has supported or leaned toward varying political positions over time. Politico has described his positions as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory", while NBC News counted "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues" during his campaign.
Campaign rhetoric
In his campaign, Trump said he disdained political correctness; he also said the media had intentionally misinterpreted his words, and he made other claims of adverse media bias. In part due to his fame, and due to his willingness to say things other candidates would not, and because a candidate who is gaining ground automatically provides a compelling news story, Trump received an unprecedented amount of free media coverage during his run for the presidency, which elevated his standing in the Republican primaries.
Fact-checking organizations have denounced Trump for making a record number of false statements compared to other candidates. At least four major publications – Politico, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times – have pointed out lies or falsehoods in his campaign statements, with the Los Angeles Times saying, "Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has." NPR said Trump's campaign statements were often opaque or suggestive.
Trump adopted his ghostwriter's phrase "truthful hyperbole" to describe his public speaking style.
Support from the far right
According to Michael Barkun, the Trump campaign was remarkable for bringing fringe ideas, beliefs, and organizations into the mainstream. During his presidential campaign, Trump was accused of pandering to white supremacists. He retweeted open racists, and repeatedly refused to condemn David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan or white supremacists, in an interview on CNN's State of the Union, saying he would first need to "do research" because he knew nothing about Duke or white supremacists. Duke himself enthusiastically supported Trump throughout the 2016 primary and election, and has said he and like-minded people voted for Trump because of his promises to "take our country back".
After repeated questioning by reporters, Trump said he disavowed David Duke and the KKK. Trump said on MSNBC's Morning Joe: "I disavowed him. I disavowed the KKK. Do you want me to do it again for the 12th time? I disavowed him in the past, I disavow him now."
The alt-right movement coalesced around Trump's candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. Members of the alt-right enthusiastically supported Trump's campaign. In August 2016, he appointed Steve Bannon – the executive chairman of Breitbart News – as his campaign CEO; Bannon described Breitbart News as "the platform for the alt-right". In an interview days after the election, Trump condemned supporters who celebrated his victory with Nazi salutes.
Financial disclosures
As a presidential candidate, Trump disclosed details of his companies, assets, and revenue sources to the extent required by the FEC. His 2015 report listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $265 million. The 2016 form showed little change.
Trump has not released 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 (in actuality, audits do not prevent release of tax returns), and his lawyers had advised him against releasing them. Trump has told the press his tax rate is none of their business, and that he tries to pay "as little tax as possible".
In October 2016, portions of Trump's state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times. They show that Trump had declared a loss of $916 million that year, which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years. During the second presidential debate, Trump acknowledged using the deduction, but declined to provide details such as the specific years it was applied.
On March 14, 2017, the first two pages of Trump's 2005 federal income tax returns were leaked to MSNBC. The document states that Trump had a gross adjusted income of $150 million and paid $38 million in federal taxes. The White House confirmed the authenticity of the documents.
In April 2019, the House Ways and Means Committee made a formal request to the Internal Revenue Service for Trump's personal and business tax returns from 2013 to 2018. Two deadlines to provide the returns were missed, then Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin in May 2019 ultimately denied the request. Committee chairman Richard Neal then subpoenaed the Treasury Department and the IRS for the returns. These subpoenas were also defied in May 2019. A fall 2018 draft IRS legal memo asserted that tax returns must be provided to Congress upon request, unless a president invokes executive privilege. Congress need not justify the request, the memo stated, contradicting the administration's justification that a legislative purpose is needed to produce the tax returns. Mnuchin asserted the memo actually addressed a different matter.
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