Donald Trump Timeline

1. 1946-1971: Queens, Wharton and the family business

Donald John Trump was born on 14 June 1946 in Queens, New York City, the fourth of five children of Fred Trump, a real estate developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who had emigrated from Scotland. He grew up in a comfortable house in the Jamaica Estates neighbourhood of Queens, attended the Kew-Forest School, and at the age of 13 was sent to the New York Military Academy, where he remained until he graduated in 1964. He then attended Fordham University for two years before transferring to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied economics and graduated in 1968.

In 1971, Trump took charge of the family business, which he renamed the Trump Organization, and shifted its focus from middle-class housing in the outer boroughs of New York to high-profile developments in Manhattan. The move was a gamble: Manhattan real estate was expensive and competitive, and the Trump family had no track record there. Trump's first major Manhattan project was the renovation of the Commodore Hotel, near Grand Central Terminal, which reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt. The project was completed with the help of a tax abatement from the city, and it established Trump as a developer who could work with the city government and with lenders to complete large projects.

During the 1970s, Trump also faced legal action. In 1973, the Department of Justice sued the Trump Organization for discrimination against Black tenants in its housing developments. The case was settled in 1975 without an admission of wrongdoing, with the company agreeing to change its rental practices. The case has been cited by critics as evidence of discriminatory practices, and by Trump and his supporters as a routine settlement of the kind that many landlords entered into at the time. It is one of several episodes from his business career that have been interpreted differently by his supporters and his critics, and that pattern — the same facts, different conclusions — would recur throughout his public life.

2. 1980-2004: Trump Tower, casinos, books and television

The 1980s were the decade in which Trump became a public figure. Trump Tower, a 58-storey building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, opened in 1983, with its gold-coloured atrium and its name in large letters on the facade. Trump expanded into hotels, casinos in Atlantic City, an airline and a professional football team, and he cultivated a public image as a deal-maker and a symbol of wealth. In 1987 he published The Art of the Deal, a book about his business methods that became a bestseller and introduced him to a national audience. He also began to appear regularly in the New York tabloids, and his personal life — including his marriages and divorces — was widely covered.

The expansion was financed heavily with debt, and in the early 1990s several of his casino and hotel businesses went through bankruptcy proceedings. Trump has described the bankruptcies as the normal use of bankruptcy law by a developer, a way of restructuring debt and continuing in business. His critics have described them as evidence of poor judgement and of a business career built on borrowing. Both descriptions refer to the same events: the businesses did go through bankruptcy, and Trump did continue in business afterwards. In the 1990s he rebuilt his standing by licensing his name to buildings, products and ventures around the world, turning the Trump name itself into the business.

In 2004, Trump became the host of the reality television show The Apprentice, in which contestants competed for a job in his organisation. The show was a success, running for fifteen seasons in its various forms, and it made Trump a household name far beyond New York real estate. For many Americans, The Apprentice was their first sustained exposure to Trump, and it presented him as a decisive, successful businessman — an image that would later become the foundation of his political appeal. He had flirted with presidential runs before, including a brief campaign for the Reform Party nomination in 2000, but it was the television fame of The Apprentice that gave him the national platform on which his political career would rest.

3. 2015-2016: the campaign and the election

On 16 June 2015, Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, descending the escalator at Trump Tower to make a speech in which he promised to build a wall on the Mexican border, renegotiate trade deals, and put what he called America first. Most political observers and many Republican leaders dismissed the bid at first, expecting a celebrity candidate to fade once voting began. Instead, Trump won the Republican primaries, defeating a field that included sitting governors and senators, by mobilising voters who felt ignored by both parties, and by using large rallies and direct communication on social media to bypass traditional media.

His campaign style broke many conventions of American politics. He attacked opponents, journalists and institutions in blunt language, he repeated claims that fact-checkers disputed, and he presented himself as the only candidate who could fix a system he described as rigged. Supporters heard in this a rare honesty and a willingness to say what others would not; critics heard a disregard for truth and for democratic norms. The division in how the same speeches were received became one of the defining features of his public life, and it has never closed.

In the general election of 8 November 2016, Trump faced the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes, but Trump won the Electoral College, carrying Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by narrow margins, and was elected the 45th president. The result surprised the political establishment, and it began a debate about polling, about the Electoral College, and about the depth of discontent in parts of the country that is still running. It also made Trump the first president with no prior military or elected-office experience.

4. 2017-2021: the first presidency

Trump was inaugurated on 20 January 2017. His first term was marked by a tax-cut law, the appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court, deregulation across federal agencies, and a trade policy that included tariffs on goods from China and other countries. His administration pursued stricter immigration enforcement, including a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries and the separation of some migrant families at the southern border, policies that drew both strong support and legal challenges and public protest. Supporters credit the administration with economic growth, with the appointments to the courts, and with a foreign policy they describe as strong; critics point to the handling of the pandemic, to the tone of his public language, and to the strain they say his presidency placed on democratic norms.

In foreign policy, Trump pressed NATO allies to spend more on defence, met the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in person, ordered the killing of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and brokered the Abraham Accords, normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab states. His supporters describe these moves as projecting strength and delivering results outside the usual diplomatic channels; his critics argue that they strained alliances and produced little lasting change on North Korea's nuclear programme.

Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice. The first impeachment, in December 2019, concerned his dealings with Ukraine, in which the House charged abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The second, in January 2021, followed the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, when a crowd of his supporters disrupted the certification of the 2020 election result. The Senate acquitted him in both cases, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict. The final year of the first term was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration launched Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated the development of vaccines, but the federal response was criticised, including by public health experts, for inconsistent messaging. In the election of November 2020, Trump lost to Joe Biden. He disputed the result, claiming widespread fraud; courts rejected dozens of challenges for lack of evidence, and election officials of both parties stated the election was secure.

5. 2021-2024: out of office, investigations and the comeback

After leaving office in January 2021, Trump remained the dominant figure in the Republican Party. He endorsed candidates, held rallies, and shaped the party's positions on trade, immigration and foreign aid. He also faced a series of criminal and civil cases, and in May 2024 a New York jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a case he has appealed. His supporters describe the prosecutions as politically motivated; his critics describe them as the ordinary working of the law applied to a former president. The cases did not prevent him from running for office, and they did not diminish his standing with his supporters.

Trump announced his 2024 candidacy in November 2022, and in the Republican primaries he defeated a field that included sitting governors and former rivals. The campaign was interrupted in July 2024 by an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which he was wounded in the ear and a spectator was killed; a second apparent attempt was stopped in Florida two months later. Both incidents led to scrutiny of the Secret Service and to a debate about political violence in the United States.

In the general election of 5 November 2024, Trump defeated the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, winning 312 electoral votes to 226, sweeping all seven swing states and winning the popular vote, the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in twenty years. The result was a clear victory, and it was accepted by the Democratic Party, which conceded the election. Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on 20 January 2025, at 78 the oldest person to take the oath, and the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

6. 2025-2026: the second term and the midterms

Trump's second term began with executive orders on immigration, trade, energy and the federal workforce, and with the appointment of a cabinet that included figures from outside traditional politics. JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, served as vice president. The administration continued the trade policy of the first term, including tariffs, and pursued stricter immigration enforcement and deportations. Supporters of the administration describe these policies as delivering on the promises of the 2024 campaign; critics describe them as disruptive to the economy and to the lives of immigrant communities, and as a test of the limits of executive power. The courts have been involved in several of these disputes, and the outcomes are still being decided.

The second term has also been marked by continued debate over foreign policy, including the administration's approach to the war in Ukraine. Trump has pressed for negotiated settlements to the war, a position that supporters describe as a realistic path to peace and critics describe as favourable to Russia. The debate over his approach to Russia and to President Vladimir Putin has run through both of his presidencies, and it remains one of the most contested questions in American foreign policy.

On 3 November 2026, midway through the second term, the United States held midterm elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress, a result reported as a significant defeat for the Republican Party and for the administration. Midterm elections often go against the party in the White House, and the 2026 result followed that pattern, but the scale of the Democratic victory — winning both chambers — was notable, and it was widely interpreted as a verdict on the first two years of the second term. The result means that for the remainder of Trump's presidency, he will face a Congress controlled by the opposition party, which will affect his ability to pass legislation and to confirm appointments. The full consequences of the midterm result are still unfolding as this article is written.

7. The timeline in full: key dates

The following summary brings together the key dates in Trump's life and career. He was born on 14 June 1946 in Queens, New York City. He graduated from the Wharton School in 1968 and took charge of the family real estate business in 1971. Trump Tower opened in 1983, and The Art of the Deal was published in 1987. He began hosting The Apprentice in 2004. He announced his candidacy for president on 16 June 2015, won the Republican nomination in 2016, and was elected the 45th president on 8 November 2016. He was inaugurated on 20 January 2017, impeached for the first time in December 2019 and acquitted in February 2020, and lost re-election to Joe Biden in November 2020. He was impeached for a second time in January 2021 and acquitted in February 2021. In May 2024 he was convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a case he has appealed. He was elected the 47th president on 5 November 2024 and inaugurated on 20 January 2025. On 3 November 2026 the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections.

Because Trump is still in office, any judgement of his career is necessarily provisional. The second term will shape how the first is remembered, and the eventual assessment will depend on outcomes that are still unfolding: the state of the economy, the course of the war in Ukraine, the future of American alliances, and the health of democratic institutions. What can already be said is that he has been one of the most consequential presidents of the modern era, not only for the policies he enacted but for the way he changed the presidency and the politics around it. Supporters will remember a president who cut taxes, appointed conservative judges, challenged China, brokered Middle East agreements and gave a voice to voters who felt ignored. Critics will remember a president who divided the country, undermined trust in elections and the press, and whose supporters attacked the Capitol. The deeper question — whether he was a cause of the polarisation in American politics or a symptom of it — will be debated for decades. This timeline is a record of the events on which that debate will rest.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Donald Trump
• Wikipedia — Donald Trump
• Ballotpedia — Donald Trump
• Nikkei Asia — US midterms: Democrats win both Senate and House (2026)
• The White House — Donald J. Trump (official biography)

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• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.