He became president of his father's real-estate business in 1971

He became president of his father's real-estate business in 1971 and renamed it the Trump Organization. He expanded its operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses and later started side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. From 2004 to 2015, he co-produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. He and his businesses have been plaintiff or defendant in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies.

Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote.[a] During that campaign, Trump's political positions were described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. He was the first U.S. president with no prior military or government service. The 2017–2019 special counsel investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to favor his campaign. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist and many as misogynistic.

As president, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted military funding toward building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and implemented a policy of family separations for apprehended migrants. He weakened environmental protections, rolling back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations. He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut taxes for individuals and businesses and rescinded the individual health insurance mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. He initiated a trade war with China and withdrew the U.S. from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times but made no progress on denuclearization. He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, used political pressure to interfere with testing efforts, and spread misinformation about unproven treatments.

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. He refused to concede defeat, falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud, and attempted to overturn the results by pressuring government officials, mounting scores of unsuccessful legal challenges, and obstructing the presidential transition. On January 6, 2021, he urged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, which many of them then attacked, resulting in multiple deaths and interrupting the electoral vote count.

Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice. After he tried to pressure Ukraine in 2019 to investigate Biden, he was impeached in December by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress; he was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020. The House impeached him a second time in January 2021, for incitement of insurrection, and the Senate acquitted him the next month. Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history.[1][2]

Since leaving office, Trump has remained heavily involved in the Republican Party. In November 2022, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. In March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury indicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records; in June, a Miami federal grand jury indicted him on 37 counts related to his handling of classified documents. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. On August 1, a Washington, D.C. federal grand jury indicted him on four felony counts related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 attack.[3]