Donald Trump Biography

A gifted self-publicist, Donald Trump is a rich property tycoon who achieved notoriety for his flamboyant style in the 1980s. Despite being declared bankrupt in 1990, Trump has rebuilt his fortune and is currently thought to be worth around $1.6 billion.

The third generation of a business family, the young Trump assisted his father in ventures to build affordable housing. He had a good eye for business and after school Trump went to study finance at Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. When he left, his chief resolve was ‘to do’ real estate on a larger scale than his father.

To do this Trump needed connections. Though broke, he moved to Manhattan and charmed his way past the members’ committee of an exclusive club; their only condition being that he did not steal the older members' wives. With these New York contacts came the access to power and money, and Trump made the rich and famous his niche market. He understood their psychology well and, while other developers fought to cut corners and lower prices, Trump raised his.

He became one of the most powerful landlords of the 1980s, with ownership of several glass towers at exclusive addresses in New York, two casinos and the Trump Shuttle airline.

With the 1990s came recession, and when Trump was unable to pay a $2 billion bank loan, most of his assets were seized by creditors and his wife divorced him. Remarkably, though, he fought his way back to riches and wrote a book about it, called 'The Art of the Comeback'.

In 1999, Trump announced he was considering running for President as the Reform Party candidate in 2000. It did not work out though and in his book Trump writes that he would never have made a good head of state, because he is too honest and a germophobe, so hates to shake hands with anybody. His 2004 reality television series, 'The Apprentice', once more took him to the pinnacle of success.

Trump’s first wife Ivana has since become a celebrity in her own right, as have their three children Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka (who was a model before later choosing to join her father’s business). However, they divorced in 1992, when he married Marla Maples, who gave birth to his fourth child Tiffany in October 1993. In 2006, his third wife Melania Knauss gave birth to a son named Barron William Trump.

As well as continued success with The Apprentice, which has now been syndicated around the world, including a UK version with entrepreneur Alan Sugar, it is Trump’s political aspirations that have once again found him in the media eye.

In 2010, he announced a desire to run in the 2012 US presidential election, and later identified a leaning to the Republican Party. During his tentative campaign, the most notable stunt was to raise questions about the incumbent Barack Obama's citizenship status.

He repeatedly called for Obama to release his birth certificate, as Trump did not believe he was truly born in the United States. This gained him support among the right-wing Republican faction, the Tea Party, but little amongst the liberal media. He was accused of racism, on account of Obama being African-American, as well as being called out of touch and farcical for believing that the President’s background would not have been thoroughly checked. The issue was resolved when Obama publically released his birth certificate, confirming that he was born in Hawaii. Trump later took credit for this move.

Following this episode, in May 2011, Trump announced that he would not seek the Republican nomination. He claimed that “business is my greatest passion” and he was not prepared to step down from his business responsibilities. He did, however, maintain that if he were to run, he would be successful.