Donald Trump

Trump University

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 because 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 him 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 winning the 2016 presidential election, he agreed to pay a total of $25 million to settle the three cases.

Manhattan and Chicago developments

Trump gained 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. Lacking the wherewithal to finance the venture, Trump was able to call on his father and Hyatt to guarantee the $70 million construction loan. With Cohn's help and their political connections, he received a 40-year tax break—which is still, as of 2016, New York City's longest tax abatement—a prize worth over $410 million. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

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 political action committee (PAC) and was his primary residence until 2019. Cohn obtained the zoning and building permits, brought in his mob partners to pour concrete, and sold apartments, creating a market for luxury Trump spaces. He delivered oral arguments to appellate court, securing a $20 million tax abatement.

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, Trump 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. 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's 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, Trump 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.

Golf 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. Trump continued to use a wing of the house as a private residence. He declared the club his primary residence in 2019. Trump began building and buying golf courses in 1999, owning 17 golf courses globally by 2016.

Licensing the Trump name

The Trump Organization often licensed the Trump name for consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, learning courses, and home furnishings. Over 50 licensing or management deals involved his name, generating at least $59 million for his companies. By 2018, only two consumer goods companies continued to license Trump's name. During the 2000s, he licensed his name to real estate developments. Forty of the projects he announced were not completed.

Side ventures

In 1970, Trump invested $70,000 of his father's wealth to receive billing as coproducer of a Broadway comedy—and lost the money. After making low-ball bids for the New York Mets and the Cleveland Indians baseball teams, in 1983 for about $6 million, he purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. The league folded after the 1985 season, largely due to his attempt to move to a fall schedule (when it would have competed with the National Football League for audience) and his attempt to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit. 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 $1.03 billion in 2025) 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.

Media career

Trump has published 19 books under his name, most written or cowritten by ghostwriters. His first book, the 1987 Art of the Deal, was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, who is credited as coauthor. It was a New York Times Best Seller and made Trump a celebrity beyond New York as a rich and successful entrepreneur. Trump had cameos in many films and television shows from 1985 to 2001. Trump acquired his style of politics from professional wrestling. From the late 1980s, he sporadically played himself as a super-rich boss at events staged by professional wrestling promotion WWE, including WrestleMania 23 in 2007. and being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. Starting in the 1990s, Trump appeared 24 times as a guest 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 since 1989, resigned from SAG-AFTRA to avoid a disciplinary hearing regarding the January 6 attack; two days later, the union permanently barred him.

Producer Mark Burnett made Trump a television star when he created the reality show 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. He made more than $400 million from the shows and related licensing agreements.

Family

In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. (b. 1977), Ivanka (b. 1981), and Eric (b. 1984). Ivana played a crucial role in generating the "fawning press coverage" that shaped Trump's public image as a real estate mogul. The couple divorced in 1990, following his affair with model and actress Marla Maples. He and Maples married in 1993 and had one daughter, Tiffany (b. 1993), whom Maples raised in California. They divorced in 1999. In 2005, he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. Their son Barron was born in 2006.

Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

Trump had a 15-year friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Persons who knew them at the time said they frequently "hit on" and competed for women. Media attention and public pressure mounted in 2025, when his administration did not release files relating to Epstein, despite Trump's promise to do so during the 2024 campaign. Some of the files were released in December 2025, mostly heavily redacted. Roughly three million additional pages released in 2026 included approximately 38,000 references to Trump, his wife, Mar-a-Lago, and other Trump-related terms. References to Trump included "salacious information" and uncorroborated statements about him from witnesses in transcripts made since the early 2000s.

Wealth

Trump has 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, did not repay many of the loans, and received $413 million (2018 equivalent, adjusted for inflation) from his father's real estate 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 wealthiest Americans.Trump self-reported his net worth over a wide range, from minus $900 million in 1990, to $10 billion in 2015. After his business bankruptcies in the 1990s, his lenders forgave more than 80% of his personal debt and allowed him to keep some of his real estate. In 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth at $4.5 billion, based on interviews with more than 80 sources. In 2026, the magazine set that number at $6.5 billion and ranked him the 645th wealthiest person in the world.

Based on the New York Times's reporting of Trump's financial disclosures during his presidential terms, the $594 million in revenue received by Trump's businesses in 2017 was generated mostly from his domestic golf and real estate portfolio. In 2025, the revenue had increased to $2.24 billion, with more than half derived from cryptocurrency and meme coins; the domestic golf and real estate portfolio's share was down to about a quarter of the total and had increased by a modest 4 percent since 2017, compared with the 18-fold increase in revenue from merchandise and publishing.

Health

Trump says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs, and that he sleeps about four or five hours a night. He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", but usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy, believing 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. Beginning in 2025, Trump appeared to fall asleep during meetings, raising concerns over his stamina.

Religion

Trump said he was a Presbyterian and a Protestant in 2016. In 2020, he said he was a nondenominational Christian. In his first term, Trump appointed his personal pastor and spiritual advisor, televangelist Paula White-Cain, to the White House Office of Public Liaison. During his second term, he appointed her as senior advisor of the newly created White House Faith Office.

A survey during his first presidency showed that 63 percent of Americans did not believe that he was religious and that 44 percent believed he was a Christian. 70 percent of respondents to an April 2026 survey said that he was "not too religious" or "not at all religious". Some of Trump's comments on the Bible or Christian practice have led critical observers to suggest that his knowledge of Christianity is superficial or erroneous, and few biographers have described him as deeply or even particularly religious.

In April 2026, Trump posted an AI-generated image depicting him as Jesus Christ. The post was deleted following criticism. He later said he had believed the image portrayed him as a doctor.

Rhetoric, behavior, and political practice

Starting with his advocacy of birther conspiracy theories in the 2010s, Trump helped bring once-fringe far-right ideas and organizations into the mainstream.

The alt-right movement coalesced around and supported his candidacy due in part to opposition to multiculturalism and immigration.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump's politics and rhetoric led to the formation of a political movement known as Trumpism, which has been compared to a cult of personality.

His political positions have been described as populist or right-wing populist, and favoring an expansion of presidential power under a maximalist interpretation of the unitary executive theory.

Many of his actions and rhetoric have been described as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding, as well as establishing an "us versus them" narrative. Trump's rhetoric has been described as using fearmongering and demagogy which intensified during his 2024 presidential campaign. He appeals to evangelical Christians and Christian nationalists, and regularly calls his political opponents "evil".

Race and gender

Many of Trump's comments and actions have been characterized as racist. Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled Trump's political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters. He explicitly and routinely disparages racial, religious, and ethnic minorities, and scholars consistently find that racist and Islamophobic attitudes regarding Black people, immigrants, and Muslims are strong indicators of support for Trump.

Trump has been accused of racism for running full-page newspaper advertisements and insisting that 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 cleared of suspicion in 2002. 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, he reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations as "shithole countries", remarks widely condemned as racist. In July 2019, a House of Representatives resolution condemned Trump for racist remarks about four minority Democratic congresswomen. His 2024 campaign made extensive use of dehumanizing language and racial stereotypes.

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, federal law-enforcement officials used tear gas and other crowd control tactics to remove 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.

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. In October 2016, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which he 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." He characterized the comments as "locker-room talk". After widespread public outrage, including among Republicans, Trump issued a video with a rare public apology and an attack on Clinton.

Link to violence and hate crimes

Trump has been identified as a key figure in increasing political violence in the U.S., both for and against him. He is described as embracing extremism, conspiracy theories such as QAnon, and far-right militia movements more than any other modern American president. He has repeatedly accused his political opponents of treason and called for their imprisonment or execution, leading to accusations of promoting violence.

Research suggests that 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. Researchers have also argued that Trump's "negative characterisations of, and false claims made about, those who became the targets" of the mob at the January 6 riot was a case of stochastic terrorism. Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes cited his rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or deserved 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 to violence or threats of violence against predominantly minorities, with the perpetrators involved being primarily white men. 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 said to have led to increased recruitment for the pro-Trump group. Counterterrorism researchers described his normalization and revisionist history of the January 6 Capitol attack and grant of clemency to all January 6 rioters as encouraging future political violence.

False or misleading statements and conspiracy theories

Trump frequently makes false statements in public remarks, to an extent unprecedented in American politics. 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. His falsehoods are a distinctive part of his political identity and have been described as firehosing.

During his second term, Trump relied on false, misleading, and exaggerated claims to justify his executive actions and policies. He continued to make untrue statements as frequently as before but with less variety while increasing the frequency of repeating a "core set" of falsehoods. Many of his false statements during his second term focus on claims relating to artificial intelligence, affordability, and taxes and tariffs.

Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, while others had more far-reaching effects, such as his unproven promotion of antimalarial drugs as a treatment for COVID-19, contributing to a U.S. shortage of these drugs and panic buying in Africa and South Asia. 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 COVID-19 pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it. He habitually does not apologize for his falsehoods. Until 2018, the media rarely referred to his falsehoods as lies, including when he repeated demonstrably false statements.

Since before his first presidency, Trump has promoted conspiracy theories. In 2011, Trump became the leading proponent of the "birther" conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States, and he claimed credit for pressuring the government to publish Obama's birth certificate, which he considered fraudulent. In September 2016, he publicly acknowledged Obama's birthplace and falsely claimed that the rumors had been started by Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign. Trump often prefaced his conspiracies by claiming he heard them from someone else, and promoted conspiracies such as climate change denial, alleged Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections, and vaccines and autism. After the 2020 presidential election, he promoted conspiracy theories for his defeat that were characterized as "the big lie".

Social media

From 2009 until he was banned in January 2021, Trump posted on Twitter more than 57,000 times. 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. He was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms after the January 6 attack. The loss of his social media presence diminished his ability to shape events and correlated with a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation on Twitter. In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social, where he attracted a fraction of his Twitter following. Twitter reinstated his account in November 2022. The two-year ban at Meta Platforms lapsed in January 2023, allowing him to return to Facebook and Instagram.

Legal issues

In 2022, New York filed a civil lawsuit against Trump accusing him of inflating the Trump Organization's value to gain an advantage with lenders and banks. He was found liable and ordered to pay nearly $355 million plus interest. In August 2025, the appeals court upheld his liability and nonmonetary penalties but voided the monetary penalty as excessive.

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 him for obstructing an official proceeding, inciting or assisting an insurrection, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. In August 2023, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, indicted him on 13 charges, including racketeering, for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election in the state. The case was dismissed in November 2025 after the new prosecutor declined to pursue the charges.

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 his 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. After his reelection, the 2020 election obstruction case and the classified documents case were dismissed without prejudice (a legal term meaning charges could be refiled after the end of Trump's second term) due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

In May 2024, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case stemmed from evidence that he 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, Judge Juan Merchan gave Trump a no-penalty sentence, saying that punitive requirements would have interfered with presidential immunity.

Sexual misconduct allegations and E. Jean Carroll lawsuits

In 2019, journalist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s and sued him for defamation over his denial. Carroll sued him again in 2022 for battery and further defamation. He was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered to pay $5 million in one case and $83.3 million in the other. Federal appeals courts upheld both findings and awards in December 2024 and September 2025, respectively. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Trump's appeal in the first case.

As of October 2024, since the 1970s, at least 28 women have accused Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, sex with minors, sexual assault, physical abuse, kissing and groping without consent, looking under women's skirts, and walking in on naked pageant contestants.