Donald Trump: Biography
Donald John Trump is the 47th President of the United States, currently serving the second of his two non-consecutive terms after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and being inaugurated on January 20, 2025. Before politics, he spent five decades as one of the most recognizable real-estate developers, casino operators, and television personalities in the country, and he remains the only U.S. president to win the office, lose it, and then win it again.
Early life and family background
Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City. He was the fourth of five children of Fred Trump, a Brooklyn- and Queens-based real estate developer of German descent who built a substantial portfolio of middle-class rental housing across the outer boroughs, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, a Scottish immigrant from the Isle of Lewis who came to the United States in 1930 and married Fred Trump in 1936.
The Trump family lived in Jamaica Estates, a wealthy enclave in Queens, where Fred Trump had built a 23-room mock-Tudor house. By the time Donald was born, his father's company, initially called Elizabeth Trump & Son and later renamed the Trump Organization, was a successful regional builder. The family's substantial wealth has been a recurring point of contention in narratives about Trump's career; a 2018 New York Times investigation found that Trump received the inflation-adjusted equivalent of approximately $413 million from his father's real estate empire over the course of his life (per NYT, October 2018), much of it through trusts, partnerships, and loans.
He had four siblings. Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal appellate judge, retired in 2019 and died in 2023. Fred Trump Jr. died in 1981 from complications related to alcoholism. Robert Trump, a businessman who managed the Trump Organization's properties outside Manhattan, died in August 2020 at age 71. Elizabeth Trump Grau, who worked as an administrative assistant at Chase Manhattan Bank before retiring to Florida, is the only living sibling of Donald Trump as of 2026.
Education
Trump attended the Kew-Forest School in Queens through seventh grade, after which his parents enrolled him at the New York Military Academy in Cornwall, New York, a private boarding school where he completed high school in 1964. He has cited the discipline of military school as formative.
He spent his first two years of college at Fordham University in the Bronx and then transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in economics in 1968. Trump has at various times described himself as having graduated at the top of his class, although Wharton's commencement materials from that year do not list him among the academic honorees, and the school has never publicly endorsed that characterization.
He did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. He received four student deferments during college and a medical deferment in 1968 for bone spurs in his heels, a diagnosis that has been the subject of considerable subsequent reporting and dispute.
Marriage and family
Trump has been married three times. His first marriage was to Ivana Zelníčková, a Czech-born model and former competitive skier, in 1977. They had three children: Donald Trump Jr. (1977), Ivanka Trump (1981), and Eric Trump (1984). The marriage ended in divorce in 1992 in a publicly contentious split that played out in New York's tabloid press, in part because of Trump's relationship with Marla Maples. Ivana died in July 2022 at age 73 from blunt impact injuries to the torso after falling down the stairs at her Upper East Side home.
His second marriage was to Maples, an American actress, in 1993. They had one daughter, Tiffany Trump (1993). The marriage ended in divorce in 1999.
His third and current marriage is to Melania Knauss, a Slovenian former model whom he wed in 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida. They have one son, Barron Trump (2006), who is currently a student at New York University's Stern School of Business. Melania Trump has had two non-consecutive tenures as First Lady, from 2017 to 2021 and from 2025 onward, and has tended toward a more limited public role than several of her recent predecessors.
His three eldest children have all been heavily involved in the Trump Organization and, at various points, in his political operations. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump both serve as Executive Vice Presidents at the Trump Organization. Ivanka Trump served as a Senior Advisor in the White House during her father's first term but has stepped back from politics during the second, focusing on her family with husband Jared Kushner in Florida. Tiffany Trump earned a JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 2020, married businessman Michael Boulos at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, and welcomed her first child, Alexander Trump Boulos, in May 2025. Trump has eleven grandchildren in total: five from Donald Jr., three from Ivanka, two from Eric, and one from Tiffany.
Religion and personal background
Trump was raised in the Reformed Church of America, a Protestant denomination, and attended Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan during his youth, where his family had ties to the famed pastor and The Power of Positive Thinking author Norman Vincent Peale. In recent decades, he has more often described himself as a non-denominational Christian, and his political coalition has been deeply intertwined with white evangelical voters, who have remained among his most loyal supporters across all three of his presidential campaigns.
He is a longtime resident of Manhattan and Palm Beach. His primary residences are Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and Mar-a-Lago, the historic estate-turned-private-club he purchased in 1985 and has used as both home and political headquarters during and between his terms in office. He is a teetotaler who does not drink alcohol or use tobacco, in part as a result of the experience of his older brother Fred Jr.'s alcoholism.
He is an avid golfer who owns or operates ten golf properties across six U.S. states, plus several international locations, including Trump Turnberry in Scotland and Trump International Golf Links Doonbeg in Ireland. He hosted The Apprentice and its spinoffs on NBC from 2004 through 2015, a role that played a substantial part in solidifying his national celebrity ahead of his 2015 presidential campaign launch.
Net worth
Donald Trump's personal wealth is the most exhaustively reported and disputed of any American politician's. Forbes, Bloomberg, his own financial disclosures, federal court testimony, and a 2024 New York civil fraud trial have produced wildly different figures over the years. The picture as of 2026 is one of substantial wealth, recently and dramatically increased, and structurally distinct from the real-estate-heavy fortune he built over his first five decades in business.
The headline figure
As of early 2026, Forbes estimates Donald Trump's personal net worth at approximately $6.3 to $6.5 billion (Forbes, February through April 2026), placing him at No. 645 on the Forbes World's Billionaires list and at No. 201 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Bloomberg estimates have run somewhat higher, with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index figure at $7.08 billion in January 2025 (per Wikipedia "Wealth of Donald Trump"). The figure has nearly tripled since the start of 2024, when Forbes placed his net worth at approximately $2.4 billion (per CAP "Trump's Take," April 2026).
The increase, which adds up to several billion dollars in a two-year window, is in many ways the most consequential business story of his second term. Forbes and other outlets have credited the surge primarily to two categories: cryptocurrency-related ventures launched in the run-up to and following his return to the White House, and a recovery in the value of Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of his Truth Social platform.
Income sources and major holdings
Trump's wealth in 2026 is best understood as four overlapping portfolios.
The first and oldest is real estate. Forbes values his real estate holdings (including stakes in Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, where he holds the ground lease, residential and commercial buildings around New York City, his hotels, and his international portfolio) in the low billions (Forbes, 2026), with the New York Times placing the figure at "at least $1.3 billion" in July 2025. Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach property, is the subject of dueling valuations: the property appears on Trump's own financial statements at values between $426.5 million and $612 million (per the New York civil fraud trial ruling, 2023), while Palm Beach County assessed it for taxation purposes between $18 million and $27.6 million from 2011 to 2021 and most recently at approximately $33.4 million (per Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, 2023 reassessment). Forbes estimated Mar-a-Lago's market value at approximately $560 million in March 2026 (per Coinedition). Trump himself has publicly claimed the property is worth $1.5 billion or more.
The second is golf and resort properties. He owns or operates a global network, including Doral in Florida, Bedminster in New Jersey, Turnberry in Scotland, and Doonbeg in Ireland. Forbes valued the ten U.S. golf courses across six states at approximately $550 million in March 2026 (per Coinedition), up from approximately $340 million the previous year.
The third, and the largest single driver of his wealth in 2026, is digital and crypto holdings. Forbes assessments in March 2026 estimate that his unrealized cryptocurrency holdings, including governance tokens in his crypto venture World Liberty Financial and the personally branded $TRUMP memecoin, carry a paper value of approximately $570 million after applying a discount (Forbes, March 2026). He holds a 38% remaining stake in the entity behind the USD1 stablecoin, valued at an additional $240 million (Forbes, March 2026). His controlling interest in Trump Media & Technology Group, parent of Truth Social, has been valued by Forbes at roughly $1.2 billion in paper terms (Forbes, 2026), though that valuation is highly volatile and tied to a thinly traded equity.
A significant single crypto transaction shaped the 2026 picture: in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration, an Abu Dhabi investment vehicle (Aryam Investment, backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security advisor and brother of its president) purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million. Of that, approximately $187 million flowed to Trump family entities (DT Marks DEFI LLC and DT Marks SC LLC). The deal was signed by Eric Trump and first reported by The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2026 (per WSJ via CAP "Trump's Take").
The fourth is licensing, media, and miscellaneous income. According to his June 2025 Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure, Trump earned over $600 million in income during 2024 alone, including more than $10 million from sales of branded Bibles, sneakers, watches, fragrances, and a guitar line (per OGE Form 278, June 2025). He has also collected legal settlements from major media and technology companies (including ABC, Paramount/CBS, YouTube, X, and Meta) over various lawsuits, with the proceeds in some cases earmarked for Trump's presidential library or for the new White House ballroom Trump has said he would fund personally (per Center for American Progress "Trump's Take" tracker, 2026).
Liabilities
Forbes reported in early 2026 that Trump's liabilities total approximately $1.1 billion, against $8.4 billion in assets, with only roughly $1.1 billion of that in liquid form (Forbes, February 2026). His debts have decreased materially in his second term: he paid off approximately $114 million in debt on 40 Wall Street and approximately $15 million more on properties in New York and Florida (Forbes, 2025–2026), freeing him from the loan terms that had constrained his cash flow during his first administration. The New York Times in July 2025 placed his total debts at "more than $640 million plus interest."
Structure and ethics
Trump's personal wealth is technically held in a revocable trust managed by his son Donald Trump Jr., with Trump as the sole beneficiary. The arrangement was put in place after his 2024 election victory and is intended to address ethics concerns, though critics, including ethics experts and several investigative outlets, have argued that the structure does not amount to true divestment, given that Trump remains the trust's sole beneficiary and continues to derive income from the underlying assets.
The Center for American Progress and other watchdog groups have published real-time trackers of Trump's reported and estimated income from foreign business deals, crypto trading and sales, licensing arrangements, and legal settlements. These trackers place the cumulative incremental income to the Trump family during the second term in the multi-billion-dollar range, although the methodology and figures are disputed by Trump and the Trump Organization.
Caveats
All Trump net-worth figures should be read with caution. Forbes relies on a combination of public filings, real-estate market data, and proprietary models. Trump's own valuations have differed from independent assessments by very large amounts and were the subject of the New York attorney general's 2024 fraud case. Cryptocurrency holdings, which now make up a meaningful share of the total, are particularly volatile and can swing by hundreds of millions of dollars in a single week. The result is that any specific dollar figure for Trump's net worth is best understood as a snapshot, accurate at most for the day on which it was published.