Donald J. Trump
President of the United States

Donald J. Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States in 2016. Prior to becoming president, he was best known as a real estate and entertainment mogul. President Trump comes from an affluent background. His father, Fred Trump, was a real estate developer and business owner. Primed to take over the family business, Trump graduated from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, taking over his father’s company, Elizabeth Trump & Son, in 1972 and renaming it The Trump Organization.

The real estate mogul became world famous for his Trump Tower in Manhattan, which opened in 1983. In 1986, while seated at an event next to Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump discussed constructing a Trump Tower across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government. He detailed his encounter in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal.” Trump Tower Russia didn’t happen in 1987, and Trump would attempt to make a deal for a tower in Moscow at least two more times (1996 and 2005) without success. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Donald Trump built a series of hotels, casinos, and other properties. By 1990, Trump had accrued $900 million in debt and was facing bankruptcy. Amidst financial turmoil, three of his casinos (Taj Mahal, The Castle, and The Plaza) went bankrupt in 1992. He continued to expand his empire through the development of Trump-branded hotels and structures around the world with Trump Hotels and Casinos going public in 1995. As his burgeoning business became a household name, Trump expanded his brand to the entertainment industry with his ownership of the Miss Universe beauty pageant and his most famous endeavor, the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”

Throughout his career, Donald Trump’s political allegiance has shifted from party to party. He has identified with a number of different political parties over the past 20 years, beginning with the Reform Party in 1999, the Democratic Party in 2001, the Republican Party in 2009, the Independent Party in 2011, and again identifying with the Republican Party in 2012. At no point during this 20-year period had he identified with the party holding presidential office at that time.

In June 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election. He entered a crowded field with more than a dozen candidates on the Republican ticket and won the nomination to run against the democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with his campaign’s rallying cry to “Make America Great Again.” The race between Clinton and Trump was fiercely contested through the summer and fall of 2016. Tensions peaked after the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which led to the leaking of emails at a time when Hillary Clinton was already facing controversy regarding her private email server during her time as Secretary of State. In a July 2016 speech, Donald Trump directly addressed Russia in what many saw as a public invitation for a cyber attack from one of America’s greatest adversaries, stating, “Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Following criticism for his comments during the speech and with increased scrutiny over his ties with Russia, Trump tweeted the day following the speech, stating that he has “ZERO investments in Russia.”

In October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security released a joint statement confirming that Russia had influenced the US election. Donald Trump was elected president on November 8, 2016 and inaugurated on January 20, 2017. As of June 2017, Donald Trump, is facing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice as a result of his firing of FBI Director James Comey in the midst of an active investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by administration officials. President Trump tweeted that he was being investigated by the special counsel, despite contradicting claims from his own personal attorney. The investigations into possible administration collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey remain active less than six months into Trump’s first term as president.

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