Trump was born in Queens, New York, in 1946. He attended Fordham University before transferring to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a B.S. in economics in 1968.
After graduation, Trump joined his family’s company, Elizabeth Trump & Son. He took control of the company in 1971 and later renamed it the Trump Organization. He was involved in a variety of real estate and other business ventures in the following years. From 2004 until 2015, Trump hosted and served as executive producer of The Apprentice on NBC.
In 1999, Trump ran as a Reform Party presidential candidate; he withdrew from the race in February 2000. Between 1987 and 2012, he changed his official party affiliation five times, registering most recently as a Republican in April 2012. Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election on June 16, 2015, and officially received the nomination of the Republican Party on July 19, 2016, at the Republican National Convention. On November 8, 2016, Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States. He received 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s (D) 227.
Trump assumed office on January 20, 2017, and filed to run for re-election on the same day. He crossed the delegate threshold necessary to win the Republican nomination—1,276 delegates—on March 17, 2020. He was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention on August 24, 2020. President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election on November 3, 2020. Biden received 306 electoral votes, while Trump received 232.