Case history

A head start, and a myth

Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York, the fourth of five children of real-estate developer Fred Trump. He was sent to the New York Military Academy at 13, then graduated from the Wharton School in 1968. During the Vietnam War he received five draft deferments: four for college and one medical, for bone spurs. He never served.

He likes to describe himself as self-made, the son who turned a “small loan of a million dollars” into an empire. A 2018 New York Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s business, much of it through tax schemes the paper described as dubious and in some cases outright fraud.

Learning the trade

In 1973, the Justice Department sued the family company, Trump Management, for discriminating against Black people who wanted to rent its apartments. Guided by his mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, Trump countersued, then settled in 1975 without admitting guilt. Cohn’s rules (never admit wrong, always attack, always claim victory) became his playbook for the next half century.

In Manhattan he built Trump Tower and a celebrity brand, sealed by The Art of the Deal (1987), a bestseller written by ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, who later said he deeply regretted it. In 1989 he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty after five Black and Latino teenagers were charged in the Central Park jogger case. They were exonerated in 2002. He has never apologized.

Bankruptcies and the brand

His Atlantic City casinos collapsed under debt. Between 1991 and 2014, his businesses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy six times. Lenders and contractors lost money, while Trump kept his name on the buildings and, eventually, licensed it to others. Reality television (The Apprentice, from 2004) rebuilt the image of a master dealmaker that the balance sheets did not support.

The grift years

Trump University (2005–2010) sold seminars costing up to $35,000, promising real-estate secrets from “handpicked” instructors. He paid $25 million to settle fraud claims in 2016. His charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was found to have been used for his own business and political purposes, including his 2016 campaign. It was dissolved in 2018, and a judge ordered him to pay $2 million in 2019.

From 2011 he led the “birther” movement, the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He kept it going for five years before conceding, without apology, in September 2016.

The first term

He won the 2016 election weeks after the Access Hollywood tape caught him boasting about grabbing women, and after his lawyer paid $130,000 in hush money to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. In office he banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries, separated thousands of migrant children from their parents, and was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. As COVID-19 spread, he told Bob Woodward he “wanted to always play it down.” By the Washington Post’s count, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years.

The Big Lie and January 6

He lost the 2020 election by 7 million votes, then spent two months trying to overturn it, losing more than 60 lawsuits. On January 6, 2021, after he told a crowd to “fight like hell,” his supporters stormed the Capitol. He was impeached a second time; seven Republican senators voted to convict.

In the courts

Out of office, he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, and for years of fraudulently inflating his wealth to lenders. On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide the hush-money payment, making him the first US president convicted of a crime. The federal cases over classified documents and the 2020 election, and the Georgia case, all ended without trial after he returned to power.

The second term

He survived an assassination attempt in July 2024 and won the presidency again that November. Three days before his inauguration, he launched a $TRUMP memecoin. On his first day back, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people charged over January 6. His family’s crypto ventures have made him hundreds of millions of dollars while he sets crypto policy. He accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar, imposed sweeping tariffs, demolished the White House East Wing for a donor-funded ballroom, declared the US would “run” Venezuela, and threatened Greenland. For his statements since 2025, see In His Own Words.

The record, year by year

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This page sticks to the documented record. Where courts dismissed cases or reversed penalties, we say so. For an independent, non-partisan record of false claims made by and about him, see Bullshitopedia. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it in public.