And this is a true story of the life of Dornald Trump from Hotel developer to president
Long before he was a contender for the US presidency,
Donald Trump was America's most famous and
colourful billionaire.
Once considered a long shot, Trump is now president
of the United States.
Scepticism over Trump's candidacy stemmed not only
from his controversial platform on immigration and
outrageous campaign style, but from his celebrity past.
But the 70-year-old businessman had the last laugh
when he defied all predictions to beat much more
seasoned politicians in the Republican primary race.
And he has now gone a step further by winning the
presidential election, after one of the most divisive and
controversial contests in living memory against
Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Early life
Mr Trump is the fourth child of New York real estate
tycoon Fred Trump. Despite the family's wealth, he
was expected to work the lowest-tier jobs within his
father's company and was sent off to a military
academy at age 13 when he started misbehaving in
school.
He attended the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania and became the favourite to succeed his
father after his older brother, Fred, chose to become a
pilot. Fred Trump died at 43 due to alcoholism, an
incident that his brother says led him to avoid alcohol
and cigarettes his entire life.
Mr Trump says he got into real estate with a "small"
$1m loan from his father before joining the company.
He helped manage his father's extensive portfolio of
residential housing projects in the New York City
boroughs, and took control of the company - which he
renamed the Trump Organization - in 1971.
His father died in 1999. "My father was my inspiration,"
Mr Trump said at the time.
The mogul
Mr Trump shifted his family's business from residential
units in Brooklyn and Queens to glitzy Manhattan
projects, transforming the rundown Commodore Hotel
into the Grand Hyatt and erecting the most famous
Trump property, the 68-storey Trump Tower on Fifth
Avenue. Other properties bearing the famous name
followed - Trump Place, Trump World Tower, Trump
International Hotel and Tower, and so on. There are
Trump Towers in Mumbai, Istanbul and the Philippines.
Mr Trump also developed hotels and casinos, an arm of
the business that has led to four bankruptcy filings (for
the businesses, not personal bankruptcy).
Mr Trump also built an empire in the entertainment
business. From 1996 until 2015, he was an owner in
the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA
beauty pageants. In 2003, he debuted an NBC reality
television show called The Apprentice, in which
contestants competed for a shot at a management job
within Mr Trump's organisation. He hosted the show
for 14 seasons, and claimed in a financial disclosure
form that he was paid a total of $213m by the network
during the show's run.
He has written several books, and owns a line of
merchandise that sells everything from neckties to
bottled water . According to Forbes, his net worth is
$3.7bn , though Mr Trump has repeatedly insisted he is
worth $10bn.
The husband and father
Trump has been married three times, though his most
famous wife was his first - Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech
athlete and model. The couple had three children -
Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric - before they filed for
divorce in 1990. The ensuing court battle made for
numerous stories in the tabloid press . Those stories
included allegations that Trump was abusive towards
Ivana, though she later downplayed the incidents.
He married actress Marla Maples in 1993. They had a
daughter named Tiffany together before divorcing in
1999. He married his current wife Melania Knauss, a
model, in 2005, and the couple have one son, Barron
William Trump.
His children from his first marriage now help run Trump
Organization, though he is still chief executive.
The candidate
Mr Trump expressed interest in running for president as
early as 1987, and even entered the 2000 race as a
Reform Party candidate.
After 2008, he became one of the most outspoken
members of the "birther" movement, which questioned
whether Barack Obama was born in the US. Those
claims have been thoroughly debunked; Mr Obama was
born in Hawaii. Mr Trump finally admitted there was no
truth in the claims during the presidential race,
although, characteristically, there was no apology.
It was not until June 2015 that Mr Trump formally
announced his entrance into the race for the White
House.
"We need somebody that literally will take this country
and make it great again. We can do that," he said in
his announcement speech, promising that as a
candidate with no need to fundraise he answered to no
special interests and was the perfect outsider
candidate.
Under the banner Make America Great Again, Trump
has run a controversial campaign built on promises to
strengthen the American economy, build a wall on the
border of Mexico and the US, and to temporarily ban
immigration by Muslims "until our country's
representatives can figure out what is going on".
Despite massive protests at his campaign events and
the best efforts of his Republican rivals Ted Cruz and
Marco Rubio, Trump became the presumptive
Republican party nominee for president after the
Indiana primary.
The election winner
Mr Trump's campaign for the presidency was rocked
by controversies, including the emergence of a
recording from 2005 of him making lewd remarks about
women, and claims, including from members of his own
party, that he was not fit for office.
But he consistently told his army of supporters that he
would defy the opinion polls, which mostly had him
trailing Hillary Clinton, and that his presidency would
strike a blow against the political establishment and
"drain the swamp" in Washington.
He took inspiration from the successful campaign to
get Britain out of the European Union, saying he would
pull off "Brexit times 10".
It was something few pundits believed would happen
as polling day approached, despite his campaign
receiving a late boost from fresh controversy over an
FBI investigation into his opponent's emails.
As his stunning victory was still sinking in across the
US, his supporters got the chance to see him in the
Oval Office when he and President Obama met for
transition talks two days after election day.
He is the first US president never to have held elected
office or served in the military, meaning that he had
already made history before he was sworn in as
America's 45th president on 20 January 2017.
Source :BBC

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