Political career

Political activities up to 2015

Trump's political party affiliation changed numerous times. He registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987, switched to the Reform Party in 1999, the Democratic Party in 2001, and back to the Republican Party in 2009.

In 1987, Trump placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, advocating peace in Central America, accelerated nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union, and reduction of the federal budget deficit by making American allies pay "their fair share" for military defense. He ruled out running for local office but not for the presidency.

2000 presidential campaign

In 1999, Trump filed an exploratory committee to seek the nomination of the Reform Party for the 2000 presidential election. A July 1999 poll matching him against likely Republican nominee George W. Bush and likely Democratic nominee Al Gore showed Trump with seven percent support. Trump dropped out of the race in February 2000.

2012 presidential speculation

Trump speculated about running against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2011 and giving speeches in early primary states. In May 2011 he announced he would not run.

Trump's presidential ambitions were generally not taken seriously at the time. Before the 2016 election, The New York Times speculated that Trump "accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world" after Obama lampooned him at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April 2011.

In 2011, the superintendent of the New York Military Academy at the time, Jeffrey Coverdale, ordered the headmaster of the school, Evan Jones, to give him Trump's academic records so he could keep them secret, according to Jones. Coverdale confirmed that he had been asked to hand the records over to members of the school's board of trustees who were Trump's friends, but he refused to and instead sealed them on campus. The incident reportedly happened days after Trump demanded the release of Obama's academic records.

2013–2015

In 2013, Trump spoke at CPAC again. He railed against illegal immigration, bemoaned Obama's "unprecedented media protection", advised against harming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and suggested the government "take" Iraq's oil and use the proceeds to pay a million dollars each to families of dead soldiers. He spent over $1 million that year to research a possible 2016 candidacy.

In October 2013, New York Republicans circulated a memo suggesting that Trump run for governor in 2014 against Andrew Cuomo. Trump responded that while New York had problems and its taxes were too high, he was not interested in the governorship. A poll showed Trump losing to the more popular Cuomo by 37 points in a hypothetical election.

Trump's attorney Michael Cohen said that he sent letters to the New York Military Academy and Fordham in May 2015, threatening legal action if the schools ever released Trump's grades or SAT scores. Fordham confirmed receipt of the letter as well as a phone call from a member of the Trump team.

2016 presidential campaign

Republican primaries

On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States. His campaign was initially not taken seriously by political analysts, but he quickly rose to the top of opinion polls.

On Super Tuesday, Trump received the most votes, and he remained the front-runner throughout the primaries. After a landslide win in Indiana on May 3, 2016 – which prompted the remaining candidates Cruz and John Kasich to suspend their presidential campaigns – RNC chairman Reince Priebus declared Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.

General election campaign

Hillary Clinton had a significant lead over Trump in national polls throughout most of 2016. In early July, her lead narrowed in national polling averages.

On July 15, 2016, Trump announced his selection of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate. Four days later, the two were officially nominated by the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention.

Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016. Trump's refusal to say whether he would accept the result of the election, regardless of the outcome, drew particular attention, with some saying it undermined democracy.

Political positions

Trump's campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.–China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, strongly enforcing immigration laws, and building a new wall along the U.S.–Mexico border. His other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement, modernizing and expediting services for veterans, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes for all economic classes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. During the campaign, he also advocated a largely non-interventionist approach to foreign policy while increasing military spending, extreme vetting or banning immigrants from Muslim-majority countries to pre-empt domestic Islamic terrorism, and aggressive military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. During the campaign Trump repeatedly called NATO "obsolete".

Trump's political positions and rhetoric are right-wing populist. He supported or leaned toward varying political positions over time. Politico has described his positions as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory", while NBC News counted "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues" during his campaign.

Campaign rhetoric

In his campaign, Trump said he disdained political correctness and frequently made claims of media bias. His fame and provocative statements earned him an unprecedented amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries.

Trump made a record number of false statements compared to other candidates; the press reported on his campaign lies and falsehoods, with the Los Angeles Times saying, "Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has." His campaign statements were often opaque or suggestive.

Trump adopted the phrase "truthful hyperbole", coined by his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, to describe his public speaking style.

Support from the far right

According to Michael Barkun, the Trump campaign was remarkable for bringing fringe ideas, beliefs, and organizations into the mainstream. During his presidential campaign, Trump was accused of pandering to white supremacists. He retweeted open racists, and repeatedly refused to condemn David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan or white supremacists, in an interview on CNN's State of the Union, saying he would first need to "do research" because he knew nothing about Duke or white supremacists. Duke himself enthusiastically supported Trump throughout the 2016 primary and election, and has said he and like-minded people voted for Trump because of his promises to "take our country back".

After repeated questioning by reporters, Trump said he disavowed Duke and the Klan.

The alt-right movement coalesced around and enthusiastically supported Trump's candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration.

In August 2016, he appointed Steve Bannon – the executive chairman of Breitbart News – as his campaign CEO; Bannon described Breitbart News as "the platform for the alt-right". In an interview days after the election, Trump condemned supporters who celebrated his victory with Nazi salutes.

Financial disclosures

As a candidate, Trump's FEC-required reports listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $315 million.

Trump has not released his tax returns, contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and his promises in 2014 and 2015 to do so if he ran for office. He said his tax returns were being audited (in actuality, audits do not prevent release of tax returns), and his lawyers had advised him against releasing them. Trump has told the press his tax rate is none of their business, and that he tries to pay "as little tax as possible".

In October 2016, portions of Trump's state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times. They show that Trump had declared a loss of $916 million that year, which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years. During the second presidential debate, Trump acknowledged using the deduction, but declined to provide details such as the specific years it was applied.

On March 14, 2017, the first two pages of Trump's 2005 federal income tax returns were leaked to MSNBC. The document states that Trump had a gross adjusted income of $150 million and paid $38 million in federal taxes. The White House confirmed the authenticity of the documents.

In 2019, the House Ways and Means Committee sought Trump's personal and business tax returns from 2013 to 2018 from the Internal Revenue Service. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to turn over the documents, and ultimately defied a subpoena issued by the committee. A fall 2018 draft IRS legal memo asserted that tax returns must be provided to Congress upon request, unless a president invokes executive privilege, contradicting the administration's position.

Election to the presidency

On November 8, 2016, Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton. The official counts were 304 and 227 respectively, after defections on both sides. Trump received nearly 2.9 million fewer popular votes than Clinton, which made him the fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote.e Clinton was ahead nationwide, with 65,853,514 votes (48.18%) compared to Trump's 62,984,828 votes (46.09%).

Trump's victory was a political upset. Polls had consistently shown Clinton with a nationwide – though diminishing – lead, as well as an advantage in most of the competitive states. Trump's support had been modestly underestimated, while Clinton's had been overestimated. The polls were relatively accurate, but media outlets and pundits alike showed overconfidence in a Clinton victory despite a large number of undecided voters and a favorable concentration of Trump's core constituencies in competitive states.

Trump won 30 states; included were Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which had been part of what was considered a blue wall of Democratic strongholds since the 1990s. Clinton won 20 states and the District of Columbia. Trump's victory marked the return of an undivided Republican government – a Republican White House combined with Republican control of both chambers of Congress.

Trump is the oldest person to take office as president.b He is also the first president who did not serve in the military or hold any government office prior to becoming president.

Protests

Some rallies during the primary season were accompanied by protests or violence, both inside and outside the venues. Trump's election victory sparked protests across the United States, in opposition to his policies and his inflammatory statements. Trump initially tweeted that these were "professional protesters, incited by the media" and "unfair", but later "Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country."

In the weeks following Trump's inauguration, massive anti-Trump demonstrations took place, such as the Women's Marches, which gathered 2.6 million people worldwide, including 500,000 in Washington alone. Marches against his travel ban began across the country on January 29, 2017, just nine days after his inauguration.