Personal life

Early life

Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens, New York City. His father was Frederick Christ Trump, a Bronx-born real estate developer whose parents were German immigrants. His mother was Scottish-born housewife Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. Trump grew up in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens and attended the Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school. In 1964, he enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics. Profiles of Trump published in The New York Times in 1973 and 1976 erroneously reported that he had graduated first in his class at Wharton, but he had never made the school's honor roll. In 2015, Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened Fordham University and the New York Military Academy with legal action if they released Trump's academic records.

Military deferment

While in college, Trump obtained four student draft deferments. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination, and in July 1968 a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was medically deferred and classified 1-Y (unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency). In 1972, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, which permanently disqualified him from service.

Family

Parents and siblings

Fred Trump started working in real estate with his mother Elizabeth when he was 15, after his father Friedrich had died in the 1918 flu pandemic. By 1926, their company, "E. Trump & Son", was active in the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. It would grow to build and sell tens of thousands of houses, barracks, and apartments. Fred claimed to be Swedish amid the anti-German sentiment sparked by World War II; Trump also claimed Swedish heritage until 1990. Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod was born in Scotland. Fred and Mary were married in 1936 and raised their family in Queens. Trump grew up with three elder siblings – Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth – and younger brother Robert.

Wives and children

In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They have three children, Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivanka (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984), and ten grandchildren. Ivana became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992, following Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples. Maples and Trump married in 1993 and had one daughter, Tiffany (born 1993). They were divorced in 1999, and Tiffany was raised by Marla in California. In 2005, Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (born 2006). Melania gained U.S. citizenship in 2006.

Religion

Trump went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church. The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale, ministered to Trump's family until Peale's death in 1993. Trump has described Peale as a mentor. In 2015, after Trump said he attends Marble, the church stated he "is not an active member" of the church. In November 2019, Trump appointed his personal pastor, televangelist Paula White, to the White House Office of Public Liaison. In October 2020, Trump said that he identified as a non-denominational Christian.

Health

Trump 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, Harold Bornstein, who had been Trump's personal physician since 1980, wrote that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency" in a letter released by the Trump campaign. In 2018, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter and that three agents of Trump had removed his medical records in February 2017 without authorization.

Statements by White House physicians Ronny Jackson and Sean Conley in 2018, 2019, and 2020 said Trump was healthy overall, but was obese. Several outside cardiologists commented that Trump's 2018 LDL cholesterol level of 143 did not indicate excellent health. Trump's 2019 coronary CT calcium scan score indicates he suffers from a common form of coronary artery disease.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 on October 2, 2020, and treated with the antiviral drug remdesivir, the steroid dexamethasone, and an unapproved experimental antibody drug made by Regeneron. He was discharged on October 5.

Wealth

In 1982, Trump was listed on the initial Forbes list of wealthy individuals as having a share of his family's estimated $200 million net worth. His financial losses in the 1980s caused him to be dropped from the list between 1990 and 1995. In its 2020 billionaires ranking, Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $2.1 billiond (1,001st in the world, 275th in the U.S.), making him one of the richest politicians in American history and the first billionaire American president. Forbes estimated that his net worth declined 31% and his ranking fell 138 spots between 2015 and 2018. When he filed mandatory financial disclosure forms with the Federal Elections Commission in July 2015, Trump claimed a net worth of about $10 billion; however, FEC figures cannot corroborate this estimate because they only show each of his largest buildings as being worth over $50 million, yielding total assets worth more than $1.4 billion and debt over $265 million.

Journalist Jonathan Greenberg reported in 2018 that Trump, using the pseudonym "John Barron" and claiming to be a Trump Organization official, called him in 1984 to falsely assert that he owned "in excess of ninety percent" of the Trump family's business, to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Greenberg also wrote that Forbes had vastly overestimated Trump's wealth and wrongly included him on the Forbes 400 rankings of 1982, 1983, and 1984.

Trump has often said he began his career with "a small loan of one million dollars" from his father, and that he had to pay it back with interest. In October 2018, The New York Times reported that Trump "was a millionaire by age 8", borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely failed to reimburse him, and had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime. According to the report, Trump and his family committed tax fraud, which a lawyer for Trump denied. The tax department of New York said it is investigating. Trump's investments underperformed the stock market and the New York property market. Forbes estimated in October 2018 that the value of Trump's personal brand licensing business had declined by 88% since 2015, to $3 million.

Trump's tax returns from 1985 to 1994 show net losses totaling $1.17 billion over the ten-year period, in contrast to his claims about his financial health and business abilities. The New York Times reported that "year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer," and Trump's "core business losses in 1990 and 1991 – more than $250 million each year – were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years". In 1995 his reported losses were $915.7 million.

According to a September 2020 analysis by The New York Times of twenty years of data from Trump's tax returns, Trump had accumulated hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in losses, and deferred declaring $287 million in forgiven debt as taxable income. According to the analysis, Trump's main sources of income were his share of revenue from The Apprentice and income from businesses in which he was a minority partner, while his majority-owned businesses were largely running at losses. A significant portion of Trump's income was in tax credits due to his losses, which enables him to avoid paying income tax, or paying as little as $750, for several years. Over the past decade, Trump has been balancing his businesses' losses by selling and taking out loans against assets, including a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower (due in 2022) and the liquidation of over $200 million in stocks and bonds. Trump has personally guaranteed $421 million in debt, most of which is due to be repaid by 2024. If he is re-elected and unable to repay or refinance the debt, the lenders may consider foreclosing on a sitting president, an unprecedented situation. The tax records also showed Trump had unsuccessfully pursued business deals in China, including by developing a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

Trump has a total of over $1 billion in debts, borrowed to finance his assets, reported Forbes in October 2020. Around $640 million or more was owed to various banks and trust organizations. Around $450 million was owed to unknown creditors. However, Trump's assets still outvalue his debts, reported Forbes.