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F.C. København - Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi

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F.C. København (forkortet FCK) er en dansk fodboldklub fra København. Klubben blev stiftet den 1. juli 1992 som en overbygning af Europas ældste ikke-engelske klub KB af 1876 og B 1903. Klubben har administration på P.H. Lings Allé 2, Østerbro i København, træningsfaciliteter på Jens Jessens Vej 12, Frederiksberg og har hjemmebane i Parken på Østerbro i København.

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Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He won the 2024 presidential election as the nominee of the Republican Party and is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.

Trump graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. After becoming president of the family real estate business in 1971, he renamed it the Trump Organization. After a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s, he launched side ventures, mostly licensing the Trump name. From 2004 to 2015, he produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. In 2015 he launched a presidential campaign.

Trump won the 2016 presidential election. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. In his first term, he ordered a travel ban targeting Muslims and refugees, funded the Trump wall expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and implemented a family separation policy at the border. He rolled back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations, signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. He initiated a trade war with China, withdrew the U.S. from several international agreements, and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but failed to make progress on denuclearization. He downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection. The Senate acquitted him in both cases.

Trump's politics and rhetoric led to the creation of Trumpism. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, racist, and misogynistic. He promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history. He lost the 2020 presidential election but refused to concede, falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results, including facilitating the January 6 Capitol attack. In 2024, he was found guilty of falsifying business records, making him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony. He faced more felony indictments related to interference in the 2020 election, dismissed without prejudice after the 2024 election due to the Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president, and his mishandling of classified documents.

Early life, education, family

Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He is of German and Scottish descent. He grew up with older siblings Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth and younger brother Robert in the wealthy Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. He attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade and New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, from eighth through twelfth grade.

In 1964, Trump enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics. In 2015, he threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board with legal action if they released his academic records.

In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivanka (1981), and Eric (1984). The couple divorced in 1990, following his affair with actress Marla Maples. He and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999. They have one daughter, Tiffany (born 1993), who Maples raised in California. In 2005, he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (born 2006).

Personal life

Health habits

Trump says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs. He sleeps about four or five hours a night. He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", but usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy because he believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy", which is depleted by exercise. In 2015, his campaign released a letter from his longtime personal physician, Harold Bornstein, stating that he would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency". In 2018, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter and that three of Trump's agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on the doctor's office.

Trump (rightmost) and wife Ivana in the receiving line of a state dinner for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in 1985, with U.S. president Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan

In 1982, Trump made the initial list of wealthy people for holding a share of his family's estimated $200 million net worth (equivalent to $631 million in 2023). His losses in the 1980s dropped him from the list between 1990 and 1995. After filing the mandatory financial disclosure report with the FEC in July 2015, he announced a net worth of about $10 billion. Records released by the FEC showed at least $1.4 billion in assets and $265 million in liabilities. Forbes estimated his net worth dropped by $1.4 billion between 2015 and 2018. In their 2024 billionaires ranking, his net worth was estimated to be $2.3 billion (1,438th in the world).

In 2018, journalist Jonathan Greenberg reported that Trump had called him in 1984 pretending to be a fictional Trump Organization official named " John Barron". Greenberg said that, to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, Trump, speaking as "Barron", falsely asserted that Donald Trump owned more than 90 percent of his father's business. Greenberg also wrote that Forbes had vastly overestimated Trump's wealth and wrongly included him on the 1982, 1983, and 1984 rankings.

Trump has often said he began his career with "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest. He was a millionaire by age eight, borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely failed to repay those loans, and received another $413 million (2018 dollars adjusted for inflation) from his father's company. In 2018, he and his family were reported to have committed tax fraud, and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance started an investigation. His investments underperformed the stock and New York property markets. Forbes estimated in October 2018 that his net worth declined from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion in 2017 and his product-licensing income from $23 million to $3 million.

In 2020, The New York Times obtained Trump's tax information extending over two decades. Its reporters found that he reported losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Since 2010 he had also failed to pay back $287 million in loans. During the 15 years prior to 2020, using tax credits for business losses, he paid no income taxes in 10 of those years and $750 each in 2016 and 2017. He balanced his businesses' losses by selling and borrowing against assets, including a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower (refinanced in 2022) and the liquidation of over $200 million in stocks and bonds. He personally guaranteed $421 million in debt, most of which is due by 2024.

As of October 2021, Trump had over $1.3 billion in debts, much of which was secured by his assets. In 2020, he owed $640 million to banks and trust organizations, including Bank of China, Deutsche Bank, and UBS, and approximately $450 million to unknown creditors. The value of his assets exceeds his debt.

Racial views

Many of Trump's comments and actions have been described as racist. In national polling, about half of respondents said that he is racist; a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists. Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled his political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters. Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump.

In 1975, Trump settled a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit that alleged housing discrimination against black renters. He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002. As of 2019, he maintained this position.

According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly, Trump made "explicitly racist appeals to whites" during his 2016 presidential campaign. In particular, his campaign launch speech drew criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists"; in response, NBC fired him from Celebrity Apprentice. His later comments about a Mexican-American judge presiding over a civil suit regarding Trump University were also criticized as racist.

Answering questions about the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville

Trump's comments on the 2017 Unite the Right rally, condemning "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" and stating that there were "very fine people on both sides", were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters.

Misogyny and allegations of sexual misconduct

In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 " hot mic" recording surfaced in which Trump bragged on Access Hollywood about groping women and kissing them without their consent, saying that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy". The incident's widespread media exposure led to his first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.

Business career

Real estate

Trump in 1985 with a model of one of his aborted Manhattan development projects[68]

Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father's real estate company, Trump Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs. In 1971, his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand. Between 1991 and 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses: the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts company.

Manhattan and Chicago developments

Trump attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of his family's first Manhattan venture, the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. The financing was facilitated by a $400 million city property tax abatement arranged for him by his father who also, jointly with Hyatt, guaranteed a $70 million bank construction loan. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and that same year, he obtained rights to develop Trump Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The building houses the headquarters of the Trump Corporation and Trump's PAC and was his primary residence until 2019.

In 1996, Trump acquired and renovated the mostly vacant 71-story skyscraper at 40 Wall Street, later rebranded as the Trump Building. In the early 1990s, he won the right to develop a 70-acre (28 ha) tract in the Lincoln Square neighborhood near the Hudson River. Struggling with debt from other ventures in 1994, he sold most of his interest in the project to Asian investors, who financed the project's completion, Riverside South.

Atlantic City casinos

In 1984, Trump opened Harrah's at Trump Plaza, a hotel and casino, with financing and management help from the Holiday Corporation. It was unprofitable, and he paid Holiday $70 million in May 1986 to take sole control. In 1985, he bought the unopened Atlantic City Hilton Hotel and renamed it Trump Castle. Both casinos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992.

In 1985, Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1995, he converted the estate into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues. He continued to use a wing of the house as a private residence. He declared the club his primary residence in 2019. The Trump Organization began building and buying golf courses in 1999. It owns fourteen and manages another three Trump-branded courses worldwide.

Side ventures

The Trump Organization has licensed the Trump name for consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, learning courses, and home furnishings. According to The Washington Post, there are more than 50 licensing or management deals involving his name, and they have generated at least $59 million in revenue for his companies. By 2018, only two consumer goods companies continued to license his name.

In September 1983, Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. After the 1985 season, the league folded, largely due to his attempt to move to a fall schedule (when it would have competed with the NFL for audience) and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit.

Trump and his Plaza Hotel hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall. In 1989 and 1990, he lent his name to the Tour de Trump cycling stage race, an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia.

From 1986 to 1988, Trump purchased significant blocks of shares in various public companies while suggesting that he intended to take over the company and then sold his shares for a profit, leading some observers to think he was engaged in greenmail. The New York Times found that he initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions, but "lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously".

In 1988, Trump purchased the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle, financing the purchase with $380 million (equivalent to $979 million in 2023) in loans from a syndicate of 22 banks. He renamed the airline Trump Shuttle and operated it until 1992. He defaulted on his loans in 1991, and ownership passed to the banks.

Trump University

In 2004, Trump co-founded Trump University, a company that sold real estate seminars for up to $35,000. After New York State authorities notified the company that its use of "university" violated state law (as it was not an academic institution), its name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010.

Foundation

The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a private foundation established in 1988. From 1987 to 2006, Trump gave his foundation $5.4 million which had been spent by the end of 2006. After donating a total of $65,000 in 2007-2008, he stopped donating any personal funds to the charity, which received millions from other donors, including $5 million from Vince McMahon. The foundation gave to health- and sports-related charities, conservative groups, and charities that held events at Trump properties.

In 2016, The Washington Post reported that the charity committed several potential legal and ethical violations, including alleged self-dealing and possible tax evasion. Also in 2016, the New York attorney general determined the foundation to be in violation of state law, for soliciting donations without submitting to required annual external audits, and ordered it to cease its fundraising activities in New York immediately. Trump's team announced in December 2016 that the foundation would be dissolved.

Legal affairs and bankruptcies

According to a review of state and federal court files conducted by in 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions. While he has not filed for personal bankruptcy, his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009. They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced his shares in the properties.

During the 1980s, more than 70 banks had lent Trump $4 billion. After his corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s, most major banks, with the exception of Deutsche Bank, declined to lend to him. After the January 6 Capitol attack, the bank decided not to do business with him or his company in the future.

Trump has produced 19 books under his name. At least some of them have been written or co-written by ghostwriters. His first book, The Art of the Deal (1987), was a New York Times Best Seller. While he was credited as co-author, the entire book was written by Tony Schwartz. According to The New Yorker, the book made Trump famous as an "emblem of the successful tycoon".

Trump had cameos in many films and television shows from 1985 to 2001.

Starting in the 1990s, Trump was a guest about 24 times on the nationally syndicated Howard Stern Show. He had his own short-form talk radio program called from 2004 to 2008. From 2011 until 2015, he was a guest commentator on Fox & Friends.

From 2004 to 2015, Trump was co-producer and host of reality shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. On the shows, he was a superrich and successful chief executive who eliminated contestants with the catchphrase "you're fired". The New York Times called his portrayal a "highly flattering, highly fictionalized version of Mr. Trump". The shows remade his image for millions of viewers nationwide. With the related licensing agreements, they earned him more than $400 million.

In February 2021, Trump, who had been a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1989, resigned to avoid a disciplinary hearing regarding the January 6 attack. Two days later, the union permanently barred him.

Early political aspirations (1987-2014)

Trump registered as a Republican in 1987; a member of the Independence Party, the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party, in 1999; a Democrat in 2001; a Republican in 2009; unaffiliated in 2011; and a Republican in 2012.

In 1987, Trump placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, expressing his views on foreign policy and how to eliminate the federal budget deficit. In 1988, he approached Lee Atwater, asking to be put into consideration to be Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's running mate. Bush found the request "strange and unbelievable".

2016 presidential election

Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. His campaign was initially not taken seriously by political analysts, but he quickly rose to the top of opinion polls. He became the front-runner in March 2016 and was declared the presumptive Republican nominee in May.

Trump's fame and provocative statements earned him an unprecedented amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries. He adopted the phrase "truthful hyperbole", coined by his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, to describe his public speaking style. His campaign statements were often opaque and suggestive, and a record number were false. He said he disdained political correctness and frequently made claims of media bias.

Hillary Clinton led Trump in national polling averages throughout the campaign, but, in early July, her lead narrowed. In mid-July he selected Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016. He twice refused to say whether he would accept the result of the election.

Trump described NATO as "obsolete" and espoused views that were described as noninterventionist and protectionist. His campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.-China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA, strongly enforcing immigration laws, and building a new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations, modernizing services for veterans, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. He advocated increasing military spending and extreme vetting or banning of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Financial disclosures

Trump's FEC-required reports listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $315 million. He did not release his tax returns, contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and his promises in 2014 and 2015 to do so if he ran for office. He said his tax returns were being audited, and that his lawyers had advised him against releasing them. After a lengthy court battle to block release of his tax returns and other records to the Manhattan district attorney for a criminal investigation, including two appeals by Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court, in February 2021 the high court allowed the records to be released to the prosecutor for review by a grand jury.

In October 2016, portions of Trump's state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times. They show that he had declared a loss of $916 million that year, which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years.

On November 8, 2016, Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton, although, after elector defections on both sides, the official count was ultimately 304 to 227. The fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote, he received nearly 2.9 million fewer votes than Clinton. He was the only president who neither served in the military nor held any government office prior to becoming president.

In late 2016, named Trump its Person of the Year.

First presidency (2017-2021)

Early actions

Trump takes the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at the Capitol, January 20, 2017.

Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. During his first week in office, he signed six executive orders, authorizing interim procedures in anticipation of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, reinstatement of the Mexico City policy, advancement of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline construction projects, reinforcement of border security, and a planning and design process to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner became his assistant and senior advisor, respectively.

Conflicts of interest

Domestic policy

Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history, which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began.

Under Trump, the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent, to nearly $1 trillion in 2019. By the end of his term, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.

In 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13771, which directed that, for every new regulation, federal agencies "identify" two existing regulations for elimination, although it did not require elimination. He dismantled many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment, among others, including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns. During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended, or reversed ninety federal regulations, often "after requests by the regulated industries". The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of his proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In office, he scaled back the Act's implementation through executive orders. He expressed a desire to "let Obamacare fail"; his administration halved the enrollment period and drastically reduced funding for enrollment promotion. In June 2018, the Trump administration joined 18 Republican-led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the Act unconstitutional. Their pleading would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans, but was unsuccessful. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety-net programs. In January 2020, he expressed willingness to consider cuts to them.

In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments, but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. U.S. opioid overdose deaths declined slightly in 2018, but surged to a record 50,052 in 2019.

Trump barred organizations that provide abortions or abortion referrals from receiving federal funds. He said he supported "traditional marriage", but considered the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage "settled". His administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration's workplace protections against discrimination of LGBTQ people. His attempted rollback of anti-discrimination protections for transgender patients in August 2020 was halted by a federal judge after a Supreme Court ruling extended employees' civil rights protections to gender identity and sexual orientation.

Trump has said he is opposed to gun control, although his views have shifted over time. After several mass shootings during his term, he said he would propose legislation related to guns, but he abandoned that effort in November 2019. His administration took an anti-marijuana position, revoking Obama-era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana.

Trump is a long-time advocate of capital punishment. Under his administration, the federal government executed 13 prisoners, more than in the previous 56 years combined, ending a 17-year moratorium. In 2016, he said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding.

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, federal law-enforcement officials controversially used less lethal weapons to remove a largely peaceful crowd of lawful protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. Trump then posed with a Bible for a photo-op at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church, with religious leaders condemning both the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned his proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police-brutality protesters.

Pardons and commutations

Trump granted 237 requests for clemency, fewer than all presidents since 1900 with the exception of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Only 25 of them had been vetted by the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney; the others were granted to people with personal or political connections to him, his family, and his allies, or recommended by celebrities. In his last full day in office, he granted 73 pardons and commuted 70 sentences. Several Trump allies were not eligible for pardons under Justice Department rules, and in other cases the department had opposed clemency. The pardons of three military service members convicted of or charged with violent crimes were opposed by military leaders.

Immigration

Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter debate during the 2016 campaign. He promised to build a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border to restrict illegal movement and vowed that Mexico would pay for it. He pledged to deport millions of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S., and criticized birthright citizenship for incentivizing " anchor babies". As president, he frequently described illegal immigration as an "invasion" and conflated immigrants with the criminal gang MS-13.

From 2018 onward, Trump deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to stop most Central American migrants from seeking asylum. In 2020, his administration widened the public charge rule to further restrict immigrants who might use government benefits from getting permanent residency. He reduced the number of refugees admitted to record lows. When he took office, the annual limit was 110,000; he set a limit of 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year and 15,000 in the 2021 fiscal year. Additional restrictions implemented by the Trump administration caused significant bottlenecks in processing refugee applications, resulting in fewer refugees accepted than the allowed limits.

On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which suspended admission of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, citing security concerns. The order took effect immediately and without warning, causing chaos at airports. Protests began at airports the next day, and legal challenges resulted in nationwide preliminary injunctions. A March 6 revised order, which excluded Iraq and gave other exemptions, again was blocked by federal judges in three states. In a decision in June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced on visitors who lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".

Family separation at the border

The Trump administration separated more than 5,400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, a sharp increase in the number of family separations at the border starting from the summer of 2017. In April 2018, the administration announced a " zero tolerance" policy whereby adults suspected of illegal entry were to be detained and criminally prosecuted while their children were taken away as unaccompanied alien minors. The policy was unprecedented in previous administrations and sparked public outrage. Trump falsely asserted that his administration was merely following the law, blaming Democrats, despite the separations being his administration's policy.

Although Trump originally argued that the separations could not be stopped by an executive order, he acceded to intense public objection and signed an executive order in June 2018, mandating that migrant families be detained together unless "there is a concern" of a risk to the child. On June 26, 2018, Judge Dana Sabraw concluded that the Trump administration had "no system in place to keep track of" the separated children, nor any effective measures for family communication and reunification; Sabraw ordered for the families to be reunited and family separations stopped except in limited circumstances. After the order, the administration separated more than a thousand migrant children from their families; the ACLU contended that the administration had abused its discretion and asked Sabraw to more narrowly define the circumstances warranting separation.

Trump wall and government shutdown

In 2018, Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill from Congress unless it allocated $5.6 billion for the border wall, resulting in the federal government partially shutting down for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019, the longest U.S. government shutdown in history. Around 800,000 government employees were furloughed or worked without pay. Trump and Congress ended the shutdown by approving temporary funding that provided delayed payments to government workers, but no funds for the wall. The shutdown resulted in an estimated permanent loss of $3 billion to the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About half of those polled blamed Trump for the shutdown, and his approval ratings dropped.

To prevent another imminent shutdown in February 2019, Congress passed and Trump signed a funding bill that included $1.375 billion for 55 miles (89 km) of bollard border fencing. He also declared a national emergency on the southern border, intending to divert $6.1 billion of funds Congress had allocated to other purposes. He vetoed a joint resolution to overturn the declaration, and the Senate voted against a veto override. Legal challenges to the diversion of $2.5 billion originally meant for the Department of Defense's drug interdiction efforts and $3.6 billion originally meant for military construction were unsuccessful.

Foreign policy

Trump described himself as a "nationalist" and his foreign policy as " America First". He praised and supported populist, neo-nationalist, and authoritarian governments. Hallmarks of foreign relations during his tenure included unpredictability, uncertainty, and inconsistency. Tensions between the U.S. and its European allies were strained under Trump. He criticized NATO allies and privately suggested on multiple occasions that the U.S. should withdraw from NATO.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and launched a trade war with China by sharply increasing tariffs on 818 categories (worth $50 billion) of Chinese goods imported into the U.S. While he said that import tariffs are paid by China into the U.S. Treasury, they are paid by American companies that import goods from China. Although he pledged during the campaign to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits, the trade deficit skyrocketed under Trump. Following a 2017-2018 renegotiation, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) became effective in July 2020 as the successor to NAFTA.

Trump repeatedly praised and rarely criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin but opposed some actions of the Russian government. After he met Putin at the Helsinki Summit in 2018, he drew bipartisan criticism for accepting Putin's denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, rather than accepting the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies. He did not discuss alleged Russian bounties offered to Taliban fighters for attacking American soldiers in Afghanistan with Putin, saying both that he doubted the intelligence and that he was not briefed on it.

China, Hong Kong, Taiwan

Trump repeatedly accused China of taking unfair advantage of the U.S. He launched a trade war against China that was widely characterized as a failure, sanctioned Huawei for alleged ties to Iran, significantly increased visa restrictions on Chinese students and scholars, and classified China as a currency manipulator. He also juxtaposed verbal attacks on China with praise of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, which was attributed to trade war negotiations. After initially praising China for its handling of COVID-19, he began a campaign of criticism starting in March 2020.

Trump said he resisted punishing China for its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region for fear of jeopardizing trade negotiations. In July 2020, his administration imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against senior Chinese officials, in response to expanded mass detention camps holding more than a million of the country's Uyghur minority.

North Korea

In 2017, when North Korea's nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as a serious threat, Trump escalated his rhetoric, warning that North Korean aggression would be met with "fire and fury like the world has never seen". In 2017, he declared that he wanted North Korea's "complete denuclearization", and engaged in name-calling with leader Kim Jong Un. After this period of tension, he and Kim exchanged at least 27 letters in which the two men described a warm personal friendship. In March 2019, he lifted some U.S. sanctions against North Korea against the advice of his Treasury Department.

Trump, the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader, met Kim three times: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 2019. However, no denuclearization agreement was reached, and talks in October 2019 broke down after one day. While conducting no nuclear tests since 2017, North Korea continued to build up its arsenal of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.

Middle East

Afghanistan

U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan increased from 8,500 in January 2017 to 14,000 a year later, reversing Trump's preelection position critical of further involvement in Afghanistan. In February 2020, his administration signed a peace agreement with the Taliban, which called for the withdrawal of foreign troops in 14 months "contingent on a guarantee from the Taliban that Afghan soil will not be used by terrorists with aims to attack the United States or its allies" and for the U.S. to seek the release of 5,000 Taliban imprisoned by the Afghan government. By the end of his term, 5,000 Taliban had been released, and, despite the Taliban continuing attacks on Afghan forces and integrating Al-Qaeda members into its leadership, U.S. troops had been reduced to 2,500.

Trump supported many of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under Trump, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, leading to international condemnation including from the UN General Assembly, European Union, and Arab League. In 2020, the White House hosted the signing of agreements, named Abraham Accords, between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize their foreign relations.

Saudi Arabia

Trump, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the 2017 Riyadh summit in Saudi Arabia

Trump actively supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis and in 2017 signed a $110 billion agreement to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the U.S. provided limited intelligence and logistical support for the intervention. Following the 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities, which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia blamed on Iran, he approved the deployment of 3,000 additional U.S. troops, including fighter squadrons, two Patriot batteries, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump ordered missile strikes in April 2017 and April 2018 against the Assad regime in Syria, in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun and Douma chemical attacks, respectively. In December 2018, he declared "we have won against ISIS", contradicting Department of Defense assessments, and ordered the withdrawal of all troops from Syria. The next day, Mattis resigned in protest, calling Trump's decision an abandonment of the U.S.'s Kurdish allies who played a key role in fighting ISIS. In October 2019, after Trump spoke to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the area and Turkey invaded northern Syria, attacking and displacing American-allied Kurds. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 354-60 to condemn Trump's withdrawal of those U.S. troops from Syria.

On January 1, 2020, Trump ordered a U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who had planned nearly every significant Iranian and Iranian-backed operation over the preceding two decades. One week later, Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Dozens of soldiers sustained traumatic brain injuries. He downplayed their injuries, and they were initially denied Purple Heart medals and the benefits accorded to their recipients.

The Trump administration had a high turnover of personnel, particularly among White House staff. By the end of his first year in office, 34 percent of his original staff had resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. As of early July 2018, 61 percent of his senior aides had left and 141 staffers had left in the previous year. Both figures set a record for recent presidents-more change in the first 13 months than his four immediate predecessors saw in their first two years. Notable early departures included National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (after just 25 days), and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Close personal aides to Trump including Bannon, Hope Hicks, John McEntee, and Keith Schiller quit or were forced out. Some later returned in different posts. He publicly disparaged several of his former top officials, calling them incompetent, stupid, or crazy.

Trump had four White House chiefs of staff, marginalizing or pushing out several. Reince Priebus was replaced after seven months by retired Marine general John F. Kelly. Kelly resigned in December 2018 after a tumultuous tenure in which his influence waned, and Trump subsequently disparaged him. Kelly was succeeded by Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff; he was replaced in March 2020 by Mark Meadows.

Trump lost three of his 15 original cabinet members within his first year. Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct.

Trump appointed 226 Article III judges, including 54 to the courts of appeals and three to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. His Supreme Court nominees were noted as having politically shifted the Court to the right. In the 2016 campaign, he pledged that Roe v. Wade would be overturned "automatically" if he were elected and provided the opportunity to appoint two or three anti-abortion justices. He later took credit when Roe was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization; all three of his Supreme Court nominees voted with the majority.

COVID-19 pandemic

Initial response

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was reported on January 20, 2020. The outbreak was officially declared a public health emergency by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar on January 31, 2020. Trump initially ignored persistent public health warnings and calls for action from health officials within his administration and Secretary Azar. Throughout January and February he focused on economic and political considerations of the outbreak. In February 2020 he publicly asserted that the outbreak in the U.S. was less deadly than influenza, was "very much under control", and would soon be over. On March 19, 2020, he privately told Bob Woodward that he was deliberately "playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic".

By mid-March, most global financial markets had severely contracted in response to the pandemic. On March 6, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, which provided $8.3 billion in emergency funding for federal agencies. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized COVID-19 as a pandemic, and he announced partial travel restrictions for most of Europe, effective March 13. That same day, he gave his first serious assessment of the virus in a nationwide Oval Office address, calling the outbreak "horrible" but "a temporary moment" and saying there was no financial crisis. On March 13, he declared a national emergency, freeing up federal resources. He claimed that "anybody that wants a test can get a test", despite test availability being severely limited.

World Health Organization

Prior to the pandemic, Trump criticized the WHO and other international bodies, which he asserted were taking advantage of U.S. aid. His administration's proposed 2021 federal budget, released in February, proposed reducing WHO funding by more than half. In May and April, he accused the WHO of "severely mismanaging" COVID-19, alleged without evidence that the organization was under Chinese control and had enabled the Chinese government's concealment of the pandemic's origins, and announced that he was withdrawing funding for the organization. These were seen as attempts to distract from his own mishandling of the pandemic. In July 2020, he announced the formal withdrawal of the U.S. from the WHO, effective July 2021. The decision was widely condemned by health and government officials as "short-sighted", "senseless", and "dangerous".

Pressure to abandon pandemic mitigation measures

In April 2020, Republican-connected groups organized anti-lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic; Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter, although the targeted states did not meet his administration's guidelines for reopening. In April 2020, he first supported, then later criticized, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's plan to reopen some nonessential businesses. Throughout the spring he increasingly pushed for ending the restrictions to reverse the damage to the country's economy. He often refused to mask at public events, contrary to his administration's April 2020 guidance to wear masks in public and despite nearly unanimous medical consensus that masks are important to preventing spread of the virus. By June, he had said masks were a "double-edged sword"; ridiculed Biden for wearing masks; continually emphasized that mask-wearing was optional; and suggested that wearing a mask was a political statement against him personally. His contradiction of medical recommendations weakened national efforts to mitigate the pandemic.

Political pressure on health agencies

Outbreak at the White House

On October 2, 2020, Trump tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID-19, part of a White House outbreak. Later that day he was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, reportedly due to fever and labored breathing. He was treated with antiviral and experimental antibody drugs and a steroid. He returned to the White House on October 5, still infectious and unwell. During and after his treatment he continued to downplay the virus. In 2021, it was revealed that his condition had been far more serious; he had dangerously low blood oxygen levels, a high fever, and lung infiltrates, indicating a severe case. In January 2021, he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

Effects on the 2020 presidential campaign

By July 2020, Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had become a major issue in the presidential election. Biden sought to make the pandemic the central issue. Polls suggested voters blamed Trump for his pandemic response and disbelieved his rhetoric concerning the virus, with an Ipsos/ ABC News poll indicating 65 percent of respondents disapproved of his pandemic response. In the final months of the campaign, he repeatedly said that the U.S. was "rounding the turn" in managing the pandemic, despite increasing cases and deaths. A few days before the November 3 election, the U.S. reported more than 100,000 cases in a single day for the first time.

Investigations

In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump's banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, and his accounting firm, Mazars USA. He sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chair Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures. In May, DC District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled that Mazars must comply with the subpoena, and judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District Court of New York ruled that the banks must also comply. Trump's attorneys appealed. In September 2022, the committee and Trump agreed to a settlement about Mazars, and the accounting firm began turning over documents.

Russian election interference

In January 2017, American intelligence agencies-the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, represented by the Director of National Intelligence-jointly stated with " high confidence" that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to favor the election of Trump. In March 2017, FBI Director James Comey told Congress, "[T]he FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts."

Many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies were discovered and the relationships between Russians and "team Trump", including Manafort, Flynn, and Stone, were widely reported by the press. Members of Trump's campaign and his White House staff, particularly Flynn, were in contact with Russian officials both before and after the election. On December 29, 2016, Flynn talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions that were imposed that same day; Flynn later resigned in the midst of controversy over whether he misled Pence. Trump told Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov in May 2017 he was unconcerned about Russian interference in U.S. elections.

FBI Crossfire Hurricane and 2017 counterintelligence investigations

In July 2016, the FBI launched an investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. After Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump's personal and business dealings with Russia. Crossfire Hurricane was transferred to the Mueller investigation, but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ended the investigation into Trump's direct ties to Russia while giving the bureau the false impression that the Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation would pursue the matter.

Mueller investigation

In May 2017, Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Mueller special counsel for the Department of Justice (DOJ), ordering him to "examine 'any links and/or coordination between the Russian government' and the Trump campaign". He privately told Mueller to restrict the investigation to criminal matters "in connection with Russia's 2016 election interference". The special counsel also investigated whether Trump's dismissal of James Comey as FBI director constituted obstruction of justice and the Trump campaign's possible ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China. Trump sought to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation multiple times, but backed down after his staff objected or after changing his mind.

In March 2019, Mueller gave his final report to Attorney General William Barr, which Barr purported to summarize in a letter to Congress. A federal court, and Mueller himself, said Barr mischaracterized the investigation's conclusions and, in so doing, confused the public. Trump repeatedly claimed that the investigation exonerated him; the Mueller report expressly stated that it did not.

The report also detailed multiple acts of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, but "did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct". Investigators decided they could not "apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes" as an Office of Legal Counsel opinion stated that a sitting president could not be indicted, and investigators would not accuse him of a crime when he cannot clear his name in court. The report concluded that Congress, having the authority to take action against a president for wrongdoing, "may apply the obstruction laws". The House of Representatives subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry following the Trump-Ukraine scandal, but did not pursue an article of impeachment related to the Mueller investigation.

Several Trump associates pleaded guilty or were convicted in connection with Mueller's investigation and related cases, including Manafort and Flynn. Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump's 2016 attempts to reach a deal with Russia to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said he had made the false statements on behalf of Trump. In February 2020, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and witness tampering. The sentencing judge said Stone "was prosecuted for covering up for the president".

First impeachment

Members of House of Representatives vote on two (articles of impeachment H.Res. 755), December 18, 2019

In August 2019, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Trump had pressured Zelenskyy to investigate CrowdStrike and Democratic presidential candidate Biden and his son Hunter. The whistleblower said that the White House had attempted to cover up the incident and that the call was part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that may have included withholding financial aid from Ukraine in July 2019 and canceling Pence's May 2019 Ukraine trip.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated a formal impeachment inquiry on September 24. Trump then confirmed that he withheld military aid from Ukraine, offering contradictory reasons for the decision. On September 25, his administration released a memorandum of the phone call which confirmed that, after Zelenskyy mentioned purchasing American anti-tank missiles, Trump asked him to discuss investigating Biden and his son with Giuliani and Barr. The testimony of multiple administration officials and former officials confirmed that this was part of a broader effort to further Trump's personal interests by giving him an advantage in the upcoming presidential election. In October, William B. Taylor Jr., the chargé d'affaires for Ukraine, testified before congressional committees that soon after arriving in Ukraine in June 2019, he found that Zelenskyy was being subjected to pressure directed by Trump and led by Giuliani. According to Taylor and others, the goal was to coerce Zelenskyy into making a public commitment to investigate the company that employed Hunter Biden, as well as rumors about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He said it was made clear that until Zelenskyy made such an announcement, the administration would not release scheduled military aid for Ukraine and not invite Zelenskyy to the White House.

On December 13, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to pass two articles of impeachment: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. After debate, the House of Representatives impeached Trump on both articles on December 18.

During the trial in January 2020, the House impeachment managers cited evidence to support charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and asserted that Trump's actions were exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they created the impeachment process.

Trump was acquitted of both charges by the Republican majority. Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict him on one charge, the abuse of power. Following his acquittal, he fired impeachment witnesses and other political appointees and career officials he deemed insufficiently loyal.

Second impeachment

2020 presidential election

Defeated by Biden

Breaking with precedent, Trump filed to run for a second term within a few hours of assuming the presidency. He held his first reelection rally less than a month after taking office and officially became the Republican nominee in August 2020.

Starting in the spring of 2020, Trump began to sow doubts about the election, claiming without evidence that the election would be rigged and that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud. When, in August, the House of Representatives voted for a $25 billion grant to the U.S. Postal Service for the expected surge in mail voting, he blocked funding, saying he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail, creating a crisis in the Postal Service. He repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the results if he lost and commit to a peaceful transition of power.

Biden won the election on November 3, receiving 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232.

Rejection of results

At 2 a.m. the morning after the election, with the results still unclear, Trump declared victory. After Biden was projected the winner days later, Trump stated that "this election is far from over" and baselessly alleged election fraud. He and his allies filed many legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by at least 86 judges in both the state and federal courts, including by federal judges appointed by Trump himself, finding no factual or legal basis. His allegations were also refuted by state election officials. After Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's fraud allegations, Trump dismissed him on November 17. On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Texas attorney general that asked the court to overturn the election results in four states won by Biden.

Trump withdrew from public activities in the weeks following the election. He initially blocked government officials from cooperating in Biden's presidential transition. After three weeks, the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team. Trump still did not formally concede while claiming he recommended the GSA begin transition protocols.

The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. From November to January, Trump repeatedly sought help to overturn the results, personally pressuring Republican local and state office-holders, Republican state and federal legislators, the Justice Department, and Vice President Pence, urging various actions such as replacing presidential electors, or a request for Georgia officials to "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result. On February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to subvert the election in Georgia.

Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration.

January 6 Capitol attack

In December 2020, reported the Pentagon was on red alert, and ranking officers had discussed what to do if Trump declared martial law. The Pentagon responded with quotes from defense leaders that the military has no role in the outcome of elections.

In March 2023, Trump collaborated with incarcerated rioters on a song to benefit the prisoners. In June, he said that, if reelected, he would pardon many of them.

First post-presidency (2021-present)

Trump's false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the " big lie" in the press and by his critics. In May 2021, he and his supporters attempted to co-opt the term, using it to refer to the election itself. The Republican Party used his false election narrative to justify the imposition of new voting restrictions in its favor. As late as July 2022, he was still pressuring state legislators to overturn the 2020 election.

Business activities

In February 2021, Trump registered a new company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), for providing "social networking services" to U.S. customers. In March 2024, TMTG merged with special-purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition and became a public company. In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a social media platform. As of March 2023, Trump Media, which had taken $8 million from Russia-connected entities, was being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible money laundering.

Investigations, criminal indictments and convictions, civil lawsuits

FBI investigations

On November 18, 2022, U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland appointed federal prosecutor Jack Smith as a special counsel to oversee the federal criminal investigations into Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump's role in the events leading up to the Capitol attack.

Criminal referral by the House January 6 Committee

Federal and state criminal indictments

In June 2023, following a special counsel investigation, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump on 31 counts of "willfully retaining national defense information" under the Espionage Act, one count of making false statements, and one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government documents, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation and scheming to conceal their efforts. He pleaded not guilty. A superseding indictment the following month added three charges. The judge assigned to the case, Aileen Cannon, was appointed to the bench by Trump and had previously issued rulings favorable to him in a past civil case, some of which were overturned by an appellate court. She moved slowly on the case, indefinitely postponed the trial in May 2024, and dismissed it on July 15, ruling that the special counsel's appointment was unconstitutional. On August 26, Special Counsel Smith appealed the dismissal. On November 25, the prosecution asked the appeals court to remove Trump as a co-defendant from the appeal, citing Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.

Criminal conviction in the 2016 campaign fraud case

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, American Media, Inc. (AMI), publisher of the National Enquirer, and a company set up by Cohen paid model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels for keeping silent about their alleged affairs with Trump between 2006 and 2007. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking campaign finance laws, saying he had arranged both payments at Trump's direction to influence the presidential election. Trump denied the affairs and said he was not aware of Cohen's payment to Daniels, but he reimbursed him in 2017. Federal prosecutors asserted that Trump had been involved in discussions regarding nondisclosure payments as early as 2014. Court documents showed that the FBI believed he was directly involved in the payment to Daniels, based on calls he had with Cohen in October 2016. Federal prosecutors closed the investigation in 2019, but in 2021, the New York State Attorney General's Office and Manhattan District Attorney's Office opened a criminal investigations into his business activities. The Manhattan DA's Office subpoenaed the Trump Organization and AMI for records related to the payments and Trump and the Trump Organization for eight years of tax returns.

Civil judgments

In September 2022, the attorney general of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization. During the investigation leading up to the lawsuit, Trump was fined $110,000 for failing to turn over records subpoenaed by the attorney general. In an August 2022 deposition, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times. The presiding judge ruled in September 2023 that Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization repeatedly committed fraud and ordered their New York business certificates canceled and their business entities sent into receivership for dissolution. In February 2024, the court found him liable, ordered him to pay a penalty of more than $350 million plus interest, for a total exceeding $450 million, and barred him from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or legal entity for three years. He said he would appeal the verdict. The judge also ordered the company to be overseen by the monitor appointed by the court in 2023 and an independent director of compliance, and that any "restructuring and potential dissolution" would be the decision of the monitor.

2024 presidential election

Trump's escalation of election rigging claims before the 2024 election[706]

During the campaign, Trump made increasingly violent and authoritarian statements. He also said that he would weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department against his political opponents and use the military to go after Democratic politicians and those that do not support his candidacy. He used harsher, more dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric than during his presidency. His harsher rhetoric against his political enemies has been described by some historians and scholars as authoritarian, fascist, and unlike anything a political candidate has ever said in American history. Age and health concerns also arose during the campaign, with several medical experts cited by The New York Times highlighting an increase in rambling, tangential speech and behavioral disinhibition.

Trump mentioned "rigged election" and "election interference" earlier and more frequently than in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and refused to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. Analysts for The New York Times described this as an intensification of his "heads I win; tails you cheated" rhetorical strategy; the paper said the claim of a rigged election had become the backbone of the campaign.

On July 13, 2024, Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler Township, Pennsylvania. Two days later, the 2024 Republican National Convention nominated him as their presidential candidate, with Senator JD Vance as his running mate. On September 15, 2024, he was targeted in another assassination attempt in Florida.

Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States in November 2024, defeating incumbent vice president Kamala Harris, the second president in U.S. history after Grover Cleveland to be elected to a nonconsecutive second term. The Associated Press and BBC News described it as an extraordinary comeback. The first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004, Trump did so with 49.9% of the popular vote and a margin of 1.6% over his opponent, the third-smallest since 1888.

Assessments

Public image

A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U.S. leadership between 2016 and 2017 found that Trump led Obama in job approval in only 29 countries, most of them non-democracies; approval of U.S. leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries. By mid-2020, only 16 percent of international respondents to a 13-nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in him, lower than China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

In the C-SPAN "Presidential Historians Survey 2021", historians ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president. He rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills. The Siena College Research Institute's 2022 survey ranked him 43rd out of 45 presidents. He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck, willingness to take risks, and party leadership, and he ranked last in several categories. In 2018 and 2024, surveys of members of the American Political Science Association ranked him the worst president.

Political practice and rhetoric

Beginning with his 2016 campaign, Trump's politics and rhetoric led to the creation of a political movement known as Trumpism. Professor Mary Stuckey identified his rhetoric as using vitriol: "demeaning language, false equivalency, and exclusion".[page needed ] Professor Gary Jacobson found he used fearmongering about immigrants and minorities[page needed ] that other researchers found were essential to his support. His political base has been compared to a cult of personality.

Trump's political positions have been described as right-wing populist. described them as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory". He helped bring far-right fringe ideas and organizations into the mainstream. The alt-right movement coalesced around and supported his candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. He has a strong appeal to evangelical Christian voters. He appeals to Christian nationalists,[page needed ] and his rallies take on the symbols, rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism.

Truthfulness

Fact-checkers from The Washington Post,[781] the Toronto Star,[782] and CNN[783] compiled data on "false or misleading claims" (orange background), and "false claims" (violet foreground), respectively.

As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently made false statements in public remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics. His falsehoods are a distinctive part of his political identity and have been described as firehosing. His false and misleading statements were documented by fact-checkers, including at The Washington Post, which tallied 30,573 false or misleading statements made by him during his first presidency, increasing in frequency over time.

Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, such as his repeated claim of the " biggest inaugural crowd ever". Others had more far-reaching effects, such as his promotion of antimalarial drugs as an unproven treatment for COVID-19, causing a U.S. shortage of these drugs and panic-buying in Africa and South Asia. Other misinformation, such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the "spread of radical Islamic terror", served his domestic political purposes. His attacks on mail-in ballots and other election practices weakened public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it. Trump habitually does not apologize for his falsehoods.

Conspiracy theories

Before and throughout his presidency, Trump promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including Obama birtherism, the Clinton body count conspiracy theory, the conspiracy theory movement QAnon, the Global warming hoax theory, Trump Tower wiretapping allegations, that Osama bin Laden was alive and Obama and Biden had members of Navy SEAL Team 6 killed, and alleged Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections. In at least two instances, Trump clarified to press that he believed the conspiracy theory in question.

After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checks in May 2020. In response, he tweeted that social media platforms "totally silence" conservatives and that he would "strongly regulate, or close them down". In the days after the storming of the Capitol, he was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. The loss of his social media presence diminished his ability to shape events and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter. In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following. Elon Musk, after acquiring Twitter, reinstated his Twitter account in November 2022. Meta Platforms' two-year ban lapsed in January 2023, allowing him to return to Facebook and Instagram, although in 2024, he continued to call the company an " enemy of the people".

Relationship with the press

Trump sought media attention throughout his career, sustaining a "love-hate" relationship with the press. In the 2016 campaign, he benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries. The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that his media dominance enthralled the public and created "must-see TV".

As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people". In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl said that he had privately told her that he intentionally discredited the media "so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you".

Trump also deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. The Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. All the suits were dismissed. By 2024, he repeatedly voiced support for outlawing political dissent and criticism he considers misleading or challenges his claims to power, and that media companies should be investigated and prosecuted for treason for displaying "bad stories" about him and possibly lose their broadcast licenses if they refuse to name confidential sources.

References

1. ^ Ashford, Grace (February 27, 2019). "Michael Cohen Says Trump Told Him to Threaten Schools Not to Release Grades". The New York Times.

2. ^ Ballengee, Ryan (July 14, 2018). "Donald Trump says he gets most of his exercise from golf, then uses cart at Turnberry". Golf News Net.

3. ^ 1634-1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700-1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800-present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-".

4. ^ "From the Tower to the White House". The Economist. February 20, 2016. Mr Trump's performance has been mediocre compared with the stockmarket and property in New York.

5. ^ Schaffner, Brian F.; Macwilliams, Matthew; Nteta, Tatishe (March 2018). "Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism". Political Science Quarterly. 133 (1): 9-34. doi:10.1002/polq.12737.

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Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He won the 2024 presidential election as the nominee of the Republican Party and is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.