Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.) is the 45th president of the United States (2017–21) and the winner of the United States presidential election of 2024. Upon his 2024 victory over Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, Trump became the first president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States (1885–89 and 1893–97). Trump is also the first convicted felon to become president-elect and, at age 78, the oldest person to win the office.
On May 30, 2024, Trump was convicted by a New York state jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment in 2016 to the adult-film star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump in 2006. He was later indicted on dozens of other federal and state charges in cases relating to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the presidential election of 2020 and his removal of numerous classified documents from the White House upon leaving office. Following Trump’s election to a second term, special counsel Jack Smith, who led both federal criminal cases against Trump, requested that the election-related charges against Trump be dropped and that Trump be removed from the group of codefendants in the classified documents case. Smith’s decisions reflected a Justice Department policy that prohibits the criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
Trump is the third president in U.S. history (after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998) to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives and the only president to be impeached twice—once (in 2019) for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in connection with the Ukraine scandal and once (in 2021) for “incitement of insurrection” in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters. Both of Trump’s impeachments ended in his acquittal by the U.S. Senate.
After the midterm elections of 2022, Trump declared his intention to run for a second term, and in primary elections in early 2024 he accumulated enough delegates to win his party’s nomination, despite the steady progress of the legal cases against him. Although some Republican Party leaders worried that a criminal trial could seriously weaken Trump’s appeal to moderate Republican and independent voters, others took the hopeful view that Trump would use his court appearances to solidify his support by casting himself as a political martyr—the victim of Democratic-led “witch hunts,” “hoaxes,” and “scams,” as he frequently characterized the many legal investigations he faced.
Trump is also a real estate developer and businessman who has owned, managed, or licensed his name to hotels, casinos, golf courses, resorts, and residential properties in the New York City area and around the world. Since the 1980s Trump has lent his name to scores of retail ventures—including branded lines of clothing, cologne, food, and furniture. In the early 21st century his private conglomerate, the Trump Organization, comprised some 500 companies involved in a wide range of businesses, including hotels and resorts, residential properties, merchandise, and entertainment and television.
Trump was the fourth of five children of Frederick (Fred) Christ Trump, a successful real estate developer, and Mary MacLeod. Donald’s eldest sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, eventually served as a U.S. district court judge (1983–99) and later as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit until her retirement in 2011. His elder brother, Frederick, Jr. (Freddy), worked briefly for their father’s business before becoming an airline pilot in the 1960s. Freddy’s alcoholism led to his early death in 1981, at the age of 43.
