Donald Trump

Fred Trump built and rented apartment blocks in Queens and Brooklyn, and raised his five children to compete with one another. Donald, the fourth, was sent to the New York Military Academy at 13 when his father decided he needed structure. He spent two years at Fordham, transferred to the Wharton School, and took a bachelor's degree in economics in 1968. He joined the family firm, was made its president in 1971, and gathered his father's companies under a new name — the Trump Organization. In 1973 the Justice Department sued that company for refusing to rent to Black applicants. The Trumps hired Roy Cohn, countersued the government for 100 million dollars, lost the countersuit, and settled by consent decree without admitting anything.

Then Manhattan — the Commodore Hotel rebuilt as the Grand Hyatt, Trump Tower in 1983, the Atlantic City casinos, six corporate bankruptcies between 1991 and 2009, a licensing business that put the name on buildings he did not own, and a network reality show from 2004 to 2015 that sold him nationally as a decisive executive. He entered the 2016 primaries, won them, won the general election, lost in 2020, and won again in 2024. BriefHistory carries both administrations and everything between them. What is set down here is the part that came first.

The son who was supposed to run the business was Fred Jr., the eldest. He became an airline pilot instead, which his father treated as a waste of a name, and he died of a heart attack brought on by alcoholism on September 26, 1981, at 42. Donald has said many times that watching it is the reason he has never drunk or smoked, and has said he regrets the pressure he added. The outsider claim sits alongside a second matter of record. Fred Sr. built his Brooklyn and Queens complexes with federally insured mortgages, and a Senate committee investigated him in 1954 over the profits he extracted from that financing. The business the son inherited had been made possible by the government he later ran against.

There is no afterlife to report. Trump is in office as this is written, in the second year of a second term that began on January 20, 2025, and the ordinary instruments for judging a president are unavailable. The papers are closed. The people who worked for him are still working for him or still in court. Surveys of historians taken before he returned placed him at or near the bottom of every list, while surveys of Republican voters in the same years placed him at the top of his party by margins no rival came near. Those two facts have not been reconciled and cannot be yet. His standing is not settled, and nothing available now can settle it.

Donald Trump's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Trump Organization company
  His father's companies gathered under one name when he took over at 25 1971
• Grand Hyatt New York building
  The rebuilt Commodore Hotel — his first Manhattan deal, done with a city tax abatement 1980
• Trump Tower building
  The Fifth Avenue address that became the brand 1983
• The Art of the Deal book
  Written with Tony Schwartz, credited as coauthor 1987
• The Apprentice television
  He hosted it on NBC for 14 seasons 2004
• Tax Cuts and Jobs Act law
  The largest rewrite of the tax code since 1986 2017

• June 14, 1946 aged 0 Born at Jamaica Hospital in Queens The fourth of Fred and Mary Anne Trump's five children.
• 1959 aged ~13 Sent to the New York Military Academy at 13
• 1968 aged ~22 Graduates from the Wharton School with a degree in economics
• 1971 aged ~25 Made president of his father's company and renames it the Trump Organization
• 1973 aged ~27 The Justice Department sues the company over racial discrimination in renting Settled by consent decree in 1975 with no admission of guilt.
• September 26, 1981 aged 35 His older brother Fred Jr. dies at 42 A heart attack brought on by alcoholism.
• 1983 aged ~37 Trump Tower opens on Fifth Avenue
• January 8, 2004 aged 57 The Apprentice premieres on NBC
• January 20, 2025 aged 78 Sworn in for a second term, the first non-consecutive one since 1893

• Hillary Clinton b. 1947
  First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination. defeated
• Neil Gorsuch b. 1967
  Supreme Court justice known for textualist statutory interpretation and skepticism of agency deference. appointed
• Brett Kavanaugh b. 1965
  Supreme Court justice confirmed in 2018 after contested hearings and often a pivotal vote. appointed
• Amy Coney Barrett b. 1972
  Supreme Court justice appointed in 2020 whose vote consolidated the Court's conservative majority. appointed