Childhood & Education · 1946–1968
<p>From a privileged childhood in Queens to a degree from an Ivy League business school.</p>
From a Queens builder's son to a real-estate mogul, a reality-TV star, and twice President of the United States — the life of Donald J. Trump, one of the most consequential and divisive figures of the age, told as a factual timeline. Compiled from public reporting and reference works; images are public-domain or freely-licensed (Wikimedia Commons). The bars mark the eras of his life.
<p>From a privileged childhood in Queens to a degree from an Ivy League business school.</p>
<p>Donald John Trump is born in Queens, New York, the fourth of five children of <strong>Fred Trump</strong>, a wealthy outer-borough real-estate developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod, a Scottish immigrant. He grows up in a 23-room house in Jamaica Estates, already surrounded by the family building business.</p>
<p>A boisterous, headstrong boy, at thirteen he is sent to the <strong>New York Military Academy</strong>, a strict boarding school up the Hudson. He takes to its discipline and fierce competition, rises to cadet captain, and stars on the baseball team.</p>
<p>He graduates from the University of Pennsylvania's <strong>Wharton School</strong> with a degree in economics. During the Vietnam War he receives five draft deferments — four for his studies and one medical deferment for <em>bone spurs</em> in his heels.</p>
<p>Three decades building — and gilding — the Trump brand across Manhattan and Atlantic City, through spectacular success and repeated financial crises.</p>
<p>At twenty-five he takes the reins of his father's company, renames it the <strong>Trump Organization</strong>, and sets his sights on Manhattan — determined to build glamorous towers rather than the family's modest outer-borough apartments.</p>
<p>He marries the Czech model and skier <strong>Ivana Zelníčková</strong>. Together they become fixtures of 1980s New York society and have three children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.</p>
<p>His first major Manhattan coup: transforming the derelict Commodore Hotel beside Grand Central into the gleaming <strong>Grand Hyatt</strong>, financed with a large city tax break. The gamble pays off and announces his arrival.</p>
<p><strong>Trump Tower</strong> opens on Fifth Avenue — a 58-storey skyscraper of dark glass and pink marble, with a five-storey waterfall in its atrium. It becomes his home, his headquarters, and the enduring symbol of the brand.</p>
<p>His memoir <em>The Art of the Deal</em> — ghost-written by the journalist Tony Schwartz — tops the bestseller lists for nearly a year and turns a New York developer into a national celebrity of business.</p>
<p>He opens the lavish <strong>Trump Taj Mahal</strong> casino in Atlantic City just as his debts spiral. Over the next two decades his casino and hotel companies file for bankruptcy protection <strong>six times</strong> — he restructures the debts each time, without ever declaring personal bankruptcy.</p>
<p>A decade as a prime-time reality-TV star that made his name a household word far beyond real estate.</p>
<p>NBC's reality show <em>The Apprentice</em> premieres, casting him as a decisive tycoon in a marble boardroom. His catchphrase — <em>“You're fired!”</em> — becomes a national sensation and reinvents his image for a new generation.</p>
<p>He marries the Slovenian model <strong>Melania Knauss</strong> in a star-studded Palm Beach wedding. Their son, Barron, is born the following year — Trump's fifth child.</p>
<p>He becomes the most prominent promoter of the false <em>“birther”</em> claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and openly flirts with a presidential run — road-testing a combative political persona.</p>
<p>From a long-shot outsider candidacy to the White House in just eighteen months.</p>
<p>On 16 June, riding the golden escalator down through Trump Tower's atrium, he announces his campaign for president — an outsider bid the pundits give almost no chance. Within a year he has swept the Republican primaries.</p>
<p>In one of the great upsets in American political history, he defeats <strong>Hillary Clinton</strong> — winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, and becoming the first president with no prior political or military experience.</p>
<p>One term as the 45th President — tax cuts and three Supreme Court justices, two impeachments, a pandemic, and a contested defeat.</p>
<p>He is sworn in on the Capitol steps, promising in his address to end what he called <em>“American carnage.”</em> The next day brings the Women's March, one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history.</p>
<p>He signs the <strong>Tax Cuts and Jobs Act</strong>, the largest overhaul of the tax code in a generation and his signature law. Across his term he also appoints <strong>three Supreme Court justices</strong>, locking in a conservative majority for decades.</p>
<p>The House of Representatives impeaches him for pressuring <strong>Ukraine</strong> to investigate a political rival while withholding military aid. The Senate acquits him, largely along party lines, in February 2020.</p>
<p>The <strong>COVID-19</strong> pandemic upends his presidency; his administration's <em>Operation Warp Speed</em> delivers vaccines in record time even as the death toll climbs. In November he loses re-election to <strong>Joe Biden</strong> and disputes the result.</p>
<p>As Congress meets to certify Biden's victory, a crowd of his supporters <strong>storms the U.S. Capitol</strong>. Days later the House impeaches him a second time, for incitement of insurrection; the Senate again acquits him.</p>
<p>Four years in the political wilderness — criminal indictments, a felony conviction, two attempts on his life, and an improbable comeback.</p>
<p>He becomes the <strong>first former U.S. president to be criminally charged</strong>, facing four separate cases — over hush-money payments, classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, and two over efforts to overturn the 2020 election. His Georgia booking photograph flashes around the world.</p>
<p>In May a New York jury convicts him on 34 felony counts — the <strong>first U.S. president ever convicted of a crime</strong>. Weeks later, on 13 July, a gunman opens fire at a rally in <strong>Butler, Pennsylvania</strong>, grazing his ear; bloodied, he raises a fist to the crowd. A second attempt on his life follows in September.</p>
<p>On 5 November he defeats Vice-President <strong>Kamala Harris</strong> to win a second term — the first president since <strong>Grover Cleveland</strong> in 1892 to win two non-consecutive terms, and, at 78, the oldest person ever elected to the office.</p>
<p>A return to the White House as the 47th President, remaking American trade, immigration and foreign policy at speed.</p>
<p>He is inaugurated as the <strong>47th President</strong>. On his first day he pardons or commutes some 1,500 people charged over January 6, withdraws from the Paris climate accord, renames the Gulf of Mexico the <em>“Gulf of America,”</em> creates a government-efficiency office, and moves to impose sweeping tariffs and to broker an end to the war in <strong>Ukraine</strong>.</p>
<p>His second term reshapes American trade, immigration and diplomacy at speed — but in February the <strong>Supreme Court</strong> rules his signature emergency tariffs were imposed unlawfully and strikes them down. The presidency continues amid a trade war, a conflict with Iran, and ongoing diplomacy over Ukraine.</p>