geeky
Donald Trump was born and raised in Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York City. He earned an economics degree from the Wharton School. Trump's father Fred was born in 1905 in the Bronx, and started working with his mother in real estate when he was 15, shortly after his father's death. Their company, Elizabeth Trump and Son, was mainly active in the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Fred Trump eventually built and sold thousands of houses and apartments. The company later became The Trump Organization when Donald Trump took over its leadership in 1971. Trump ran the company for 45 years until 2016. During his real estate career, Trump built, renovated, and managed a significant number of office towers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses.
Recognizing the value of diversity in business interests, Trump also conducted several side ventures. He has has licensed the use of his name for the branding of various products and properties, including Trump Entertainment Resorts. He is also the founder of Trump University. His fame and name recognition increased significantly when he produced and hosted a reality television series on NBC from 2004 to 2015 called "The Apprentice". It was on that series that Trump became famous for his signature phrase "You're fired!" In their 2017 annual ranking of billionaires, Forbes Magazine estimated Trump's net worth to be $3.5 billion, making him the 544th richest person in the world, and 201st in the United States. These estimates have been disputed with sources such as Bloomberg News estimating his net worth to be lower ($3 billion in 2016) and others including Trump himself estimating it to be much higher.
Thus far, Trump has the distinction of being the only President to have appeared in a televised wrestling match. Trump is a World Wrestling Entertainment fan and a friend of WWE chairman Vince McMahon and in 1988 and 1989 Trump hosted WrestleMania IV and V at his Boardwalk Hall. He appeared in WrestleMania VII, and was interviewed ringside at WrestleMania XX. Trump also appeared at WrestleMania XXIII in a match called "The Battle of the Billionaires". He was in the corner of wrestler Bobby Lashley, while McMahon was in the corner of Lashley's opponent Umaga, with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the special guest referee. The terms of the match were that either Trump or McMahon would have their head shaved if their competitor lost. Lashley won the match, and so McMahon was shaved bald.
According to Trump biographer Roger Stone, Trump was influenced by Richard Nixon, who predicted that Trump might someday become President. (The other famous predictor of a Trump presidency was the character Lisa Simpson on the Fox TV show "The Simpsons"). Trump first publicly expressed interest in running for political office in 1987, when he spent almost $100,000 to place full-page ads in several newspapers. The ads read "America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves and should present Western Europe and Japan with a bill for America's efforts to safeguard the passage of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf." According to a Gallup Poll at the time, Trump was the tenth most admired person in America. He briefly ran for the Reform Party's presidential nomination in 2000 and won two primaries, but withdrew his candidacy early on.
Trump made his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2011. His appearance at CPAC was organized by GOProud, an LGBT conservative organization. GOProud pushed for a write-in campaign for Trump at CPAC's presidential straw poll. In June of 2015, Trump launched his campaign for the 2016 presidential election and quickly emerged as the front-runner among seventeen candidates in the Republican primaries. His campaign was not taken seriously at first, but one by one his opponents dropped out as Trump steamrolled through the primaries. His remaining opponents all suspended their campaigns by the end of May 2016, and in July he was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention. Indiana Governor Mike Pence was chosen as his running mate. His "shoot from the hip" speaking style generated a lot of free media coverage and news of his campaign led and dominated most of the news coverage of the election campaign. He was able to overcome a late "October surprise" when offensive comments of a sexual nature that he had made years earlier to NBC entertainment personality Billy Bush were broadcast in the campaign. This issue was not damaging enough to deter voters in states comprising an electoral college majority to vote for him. He was even able to wrestle away a number of "blue states" which had previously been considered safe Democratic states and part of the "blue wall" that previous Republican presidential candidates had been unable to win.
Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017. At that time he became both the oldest and the wealthiest person ever to win the presidency. He is also first elected president without prior military or government service, and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote.
Trump's political positions have been called populist, protectionist, and nationalist. During his first few months in office, Trump issued almost 40 executive orders, the most controversial of which have been executive orders 13769 and 13780 dealing with denying admission to the US of people from several foreign countries. These orders have been blocked by federal courts. His nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 7, 2017. Trump drew criticism for his firing of controversial FBI Director James Comey and for his comments taunting Korean leader Kim Jong-un (with whom he met this week). More recently, the President attended the June, 2018 G-7 Summit in Quebec, where he and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traded critical comments and refused to sign the Joint Communiqué at the conclusion of the summit.
President Trump has also proven to be unique in his use of the social media app Twitter as a means of getting his message out. While he has been criticized for the bluntness of this method and of some of the content of his tweets, it is certainly extremely effective as a means of getting noticed. Whatever else one may wish to say about President Donald Trump, two things are clear: (1) He was elected as President of the United States by the voters in accordance with the rules set out in the Constitution, and (2) Very few people have a neutral opinion of him.
We are living in interesting times. Happy birthday Mr. President.