Donald Trump

EARLY LIFE

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. His father was a wealthy real-estate developer and his mother was a homemaker. Trump, the fourth of five children and the second son, attended a private boarding school in rural New York for high school. He spent his first two years of college at New York City’s Fordham University, before completing his education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce (known now as the Wharton School).

After graduation, Trump returned to New York City and began working for his father’s real-estate business. In 1971, he became president of a collection of family-owned businesses, which he later named the Trump Organization.

FROM BUSINESSMAN TO POLITICIAN

After taking control of the Trump Organization, Trump continued to work in real-estate development but also expanded into other businesses. He purchased sports teams, published books, and served as the producer and host of a reality TV show called The Apprentice. He married his third wife and future first lady, model Melania Knauss, in 2005. (Trump was previously married to model Ivana Zelníčková and actress Marla Maples.)

In 2000, Trump ran for president as a candidate on a third-party ticket, meaning as an alternative candidate to those from the two major political parties, the Republicans and Democrats. He dropped out early in the race but considered running again in 2004 and 2012. In 2015, he announced he was again running for president, this time on a major-party ticket as a Republican nominee. He beat out 16 other candidates to become the party’s official nominee in 2016.

THE 2016 ELECTION

Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election was Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and former first lady (her husband is former U.S. president Bill Clinton). Because of Trump's lack of experience in public service and the untraditional way he ran his campaign, many expected Clinton to become the first female president of the United States.

In many countries, national elections are somewhat simple: The candidate with the most votes wins. But citizens of the United States participate in a more complex, two-step process. After individual citizens across the country have participated in the popular vote, it's up to a group called the electoral college to consider those votes and choose the president. Based on population, each state has a certain number of delegates, or voters, in the electoral college who vote for the president according to how people in their state voted. The candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all the state’s delegates.

After the 2016 election votes were counted, Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump, winning the popular vote. But Trump won the popular vote in several of the states that had a lot of delegates—and therefore he won the presidency. Trump is only the fifth president to take office after losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college.

PRESIDENTIAL ACTS

Like President Reagan before him, candidate Trump declared that his lack of experience as a politician made him better suited to represent the ordinary citizens of the country. Enough voters agreed with him, and he was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 20, 2017.

Upon becoming president, Trump promised to follow his campaign slogan and "Make America Great Again." He began by providing more jobs for the middle class, attempting to lower the national debt (the amount of money that the United States owes to other countries and companies), and raising money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to increase border security and prevent immigrants from illegally entering the country. He also rolled back previous policies directed at reducing pollution and climate change, saying they were too costly for the U.S. government to fund. In addition, to create more jobs, his administration has proposed plans to allow drilling and mining where they were previously off-limits in national parks and reduced the amount of land set aside for wildlife listed under the Endangered Species Act, a law that helped bring many North American species back from near-extinction. Under Trump’s administration, cruelty to animals became a federal crime in late 2019.

During his first term as president, Trump also appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States: Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

THE FIRST IMPEACHMENT

In 2019, evidence emerged that Trump had allegedly withheld aid to the Eastern European country of Ukraine in an attempt to get them to provide damaging information on one of his political rivals. This angered many members of Congress. On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump, or officially charge him with misconduct in office. The two charges (called articles of impeachment) were abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, or blocking Congress from doing their job properly. The Senate then held a trial to decide if Trump should be removed from office. After nearly three weeks, the Senate voted to let the president remain in office.

Only two other U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill Clinton in 1998. Like Trump, neither were removed from office.

RUNNING FOR TERM TWO

During the spring of 2020, Trump began actively campaigning for a second term in office. This time, he was running against Democrat Joe Biden, who served as Barack Obama’s vice president during his two terms in office.

The 2020 election was unlike any other in U.S. history in that it took place in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Both Trump and Biden had to try to run their campaigns while a highly contagious, deadly disease spread across the country. Trump decided to appear at rallies attended by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. In contrast, Biden chose to stay socially distant and speak to his supporters during online campaign events.

In early October 2020, both Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus. They recovered quickly, and Trump resumed campaigning for reelection by the middle of the month.

The pandemic was a key issue that both candidates had to address, as well as the high unemployment rate caused by the crisis. Voters were also concerned about racial tensions across the country after high-profile shootings of Black people by police officers, as well as healthcare, a topic that had been much discussed during Trump’s term in office.

2020 ELECTION RESULTS

Concerned about catching and spreading COVID-19, many voters chose to vote by mail during the presidential election. That meant that determining the election results took longer than it had in previous years. But once all the votes had been counted, Biden was declared the winner. He won about 81 million votes to Trump’s approximately 74 million, winning the popular vote by 51.4 percent. In the electoral college, Biden won 306 votes to Trump’s 232. (The winning candidate must receive 270 electoral votes in the electoral college.)

On December 14, 2020, the electoral college formally elected Biden as the next president of the United States, making Trump the 10th incumbent commander in chief to not be reelected.

AN ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL

In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede to Biden, declaring that he had won the election even though he and his legal team could not offer any evidence to back up his claims. On January 6, 2021, while Congress was in a joint session to count the electoral votes, a mob of violent protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from declaring victory for Biden. The mob consisted of people who believed Trump’s false claims that he had won the election. Five people, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, died during the riots. (Congress met later that night after police had retaken the Capitol to officially declare Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president-elect and vice president-elect of the United States.)

One week after the events of January 6, Trump was impeached for a second time, making him the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice by the House of Representatives. This time he was charged with inciting an insurrection, or encouraging mob violence against a government. Once again, the Senate held a trial, but the final tally fell 10 votes shy of conviction, or of finding Trump guilty of a crime. Had the vote succeeded, lawmakers could’ve banned him from future government service. By avoiding conviction, Trump was free to run for office again in 2024.

After completing his first term, Trump became the first former president to face criminal charges related to conduct in and out of office. Trump is also the first president to be found guilty of felony crimes, or serious crimes punishable by time in prison or by the death penalty. He remained president until January 2021, when Biden took the oath of office. Trump became the first president to skip his successor's inauguration ceremony since Andrew Johnson in 1869, and one of just five in history to do so.

ANOTHER CHANCE AT THE PRESIDENCY

In November 2022, Trump officially announced his intention to run for president again. Throughout his campaign, he promised to restore the policies and priorities of his first term. In July 2024, he announced JD Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, as his pick for vice president.

Early on, Trump’s polling was strong against incumbent president Biden. Then a historic shakeup occurred when Biden announced just 15 weeks before the election that he was dropping out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris took over as the new Democratic nominee.

The last-minute change did not sway voters who remained dissatisfied with the Biden administration. Trump defeated Harris and succeeded in becoming the first person to win a nonconsecutive term since Grover Cleveland in 1892. Trump won about 77 million votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president, to Harris’s approximately 75 million, or 48.3 percent of the votes. In the electoral college, Trump won 312 votes to Harris’s 226. President-elect Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on January 20, 2025.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Few presidents have entered the White House facing as many challenges as President Trump. Some of the things his administration will have to address include economic hardships the country is experiencing because of inflation, the debate regarding healthcare access in the United States, and navigating climate change policy in a rapidly warming world. How Trump handles these challenges, among others, will shape his presidential legacy.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum, revised for digital by Avery Hurt and Kay Boatner