Donald Trump: From Queens Real Estate to a Second Term as President
Donald Trump in his official presidential portrait for his second term, released in 2025. Photo: Daniel Torok / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City, the fourth of five children of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. As of November 2025 he was serving his second, nonconsecutive term as the 47th president of the United States, having first held the office as the 45th.
From Queens to the family business
Trump studied at Fordham University before transferring to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in May 1968 with a bachelor of science degree in economics. In 1971 he became president of his father’s real estate company and renamed it the Trump Organization, the base for a career in property development, branding and licensing.
His public profile widened well beyond real estate in the 2000s. From 2004 to 2015 he hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. He has been married three times, to Ivana Zelníčková, Marla Maples and Melania Knauss, and has five children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany and Barron.
First term
Trump ran for president in 2016 as a Republican. He defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College, 304 votes to 227, though Clinton won the national popular vote by about 2.87 million ballots. That made him the fifth president to win the office while losing the popular vote. He took office on January 20, 2017, with Mike Pence as vice president, and served a single four-year term before leaving in January 2021.
The first term included two impeachments by the House of Representatives. The first, in December 2019, concerned his dealings with Ukraine’s president, and the Senate acquitted him in February 2020. The second came in January 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and the Senate acquitted him on February 13, 2021. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, 306 electoral votes to 232, and left office on January 20, 2021.
Return to office
Trump ran again in 2024. In May of that year a New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. On January 10, 2025, Judge Juan Merchan imposed a sentence with no penalty. He is the first president to take office with a felony conviction.
In the November 2024 election he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, winning 312 electoral votes to her 226 and the popular vote 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2025, with JD Vance as vice president, and at 78 became the oldest person to assume the presidency. His administration issued more executive orders in its first 100 days than any previous one, and on his first day he granted clemency to people convicted over the January 6 riot. By late February 2025, the administration had dismissed more than 30,000 federal employees.
The Vermont vote
The clearest Vermont connection is the ballot box. According to unofficial results from the Vermont Secretary of State’s office, reported by Vermont Public on November 6, 2024, more Vermonters voted for Trump in 2024 than in either of his two earlier runs. The same report said he received 6,645 more ballots than in 2020, while Harris received 7,131 fewer votes than Biden had four years earlier. Those figures describe changes in turnout and support. They do not speak to the state’s overall result, which this profile does not report, since the report summarized here covered only those comparisons.
Sources: Wikipedia; Vermont Public. Developments after early November 2025 were not covered here.
