donald trump

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Donald Trump (2017)
Signature of Donald Trump, 2009

Donald John Trump [ ˈdɑn.əld dʒɑntɹɐmp ] (born June 14, 1946 in Queens , New York City , New York ) is an American entrepreneur , entertainer , and politician ( Republican Party ). He was the 45th President of the United States from 2017 to 2021 .

Trump is the owner of the conglomerate The Trump Organization and served as CEO from 1971 to 2017 . Despite his privileged origins and several corporate bankruptcies in the real estate industry , he managed from 1990 to make his name a brand and a synonym for the American Dream come true. As the host of the talent show The Apprentice , which aired from 2004 to 2015 , he became one of the most well-known personalities in the United States.

Trump supported various political parties, but has been registered as a Republican (with a brief interruption) since 2009 . As their candidate, he won the 2016 presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton . Its eclectic program included elements of populism , conservatism , protectionism , economic liberalism and isolationism . With a simple language style, provocative statements and radical suggestions, he attracted the attention of the media in a special way and acted as his own media mouthpiece through intensive use of the short message service Twitter . On December 18, 2019, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against Trump, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress . On February 5, 2020, he was acquitted by the Republican-dominated Senate .

In the 2020 presidential election , Trump ran for re-election but lost to Democrat Joe Biden . Even before the election results were announced, Trump had announced that he did not want to accept defeat. After unsuccessful attempts to challenge the election results in court, on January 6, 2021 in Washington , he called, among other things, to “fight” to “take our country back”. Hundreds of his supporters then stormed the Capitol , where at that time the election result was to be formally confirmed in a joint session of Congress. The storming, which killed five people, had no effect on confirming Biden as the victor, but it did create major upheaval in the United States political landscape. A second impeachment trial for incitement to riot was subsequently instituted against Trump on January 13, 2021 ; this also ended on February 13 of the same year with an acquittal.

Trump is considered by American historians to be one of the least successful presidents of the United States. He was ranked 41st out of 44 presidents in C-SPAN's annual Presidential Historians Survey for 2021.

personal

origin

Donald Trump is the fourth of five children of New York real estate entrepreneur Fred C. Trump (1905-1999) and Scottish fisherman 's daughter Mary Anne MacLeod (1912-2000). His father's parents, born Friedrich Trump and Elisabeth Christ , had immigrated from Kallstadt in der Pfalz (then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria ).

Trump's uncle John G. Trump was an electrical engineer and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1936 to 1973 . There, together with Robert Jemison Van de Graaff , he was one of the pioneers in the generation of high electrical voltages and their use in cancer therapy , where he emerged with pioneering approaches to reducing side effects. During World War II , he was instrumental in equipping the United States Army with the latest radar equipment.

Nine uncles and aunts, like Donald Trump's mother, came from poor backgrounds on the Hebridean island of Lewis and Harris . He was named Donald after one of these Scottish uncles.

Donald Trump has repeatedly misrepresented his ancestral origins: in his book The Art of the Deal (1987) he stated that his grandfather was from Karlstad in Sweden , thereby continuing a tale his father had told during the Second World War. At least four times since taking office as President, Trump has falsely claimed that his father was born in Germany. Only euphemistic legends circulated about his mother's origins until a Scottish journalist uncovered the actual facts in 2016 after Trump had polemicized against poverty refugees.

childhood and education

When Donald Trump was born in June 1946, the housing sector, in which his father Fred was an entrepreneur, was in a serious crisis. After the homecoming of more than 6 million soldiers from the Second World War, there was an immense demand for living space, but due to the great need for building materials, these were hardly available at affordable prices for inexpensive housing projects, in which Fred Trump had specialized during the war . In 1947, after President Harry S. Truman significantly increased federal funding from the Federal Housing Administration to boost housing construction , Fred Trump, who had previously benefited greatly from such funding, launched a major 1,344-apartment development called Shore Haven in Brooklyn that went through the local press would become known as "Trump City". And in Queens he, a rather modest man who was very conscious of thrift, built a representative residence with 23 rooms and 9 bathrooms. There were also two Cadillacs with license plates FT1 and FT2, for which he also hired a chauffeur .

Donald Trump grew up knowing he was special and superior to others. His father encouraged him by saying he was a "king" and must become a "killer" in everything he did. Even as a pre-school boy, Donald attracted attention because of his aggressiveness towards other children. Like his siblings, he first attended the Kew Forest School in Queens. There were strict rules at school as well as at home, but Donald would not be tamed and therefore often had to do detention. He showed good performances in school sports , especially in ball sports . His favorite sport was baseball , whose "Mecca" in the mid-1950s was New York with its three top clubs. Because of his massive physical effort, Trump was feared by opponents. To escape the orderly, quiet life in Queens, he and a friend would take clandestine Saturday trips to Manhattan , where, inspired by the musical West Side Story , which was a big hit on Broadway , they bought switchblades . One day in 1959, Fred Trump discovered his son's knife collection and learned about the secret excursions. Deciding that a radical change was needed, he sent his son about 100 kilometers away to the New York Military Academy in the small town of Cornwall, New York , a private boarding school offering pre-military training. Discipline was strict there, and Donald Trump had to forgo all luxuries and had no privileges because of his origins. He got along, and he enjoyed getting awards for the cleanest room and the shinyst shoes. For the first time, he also developed an ambition to do well at school. He became a team captain in baseball, and that's probably how he made a headline for the first time : Trump Wins Game for NYMA . In 1964 he left the academy with a high school diploma.

Trump then studied economics , first from 1964 to 1966 in New York at Fordham University and from 1966 at the Wharton School in Philadelphia , the renowned economics faculty of the University of Pennsylvania with a department for real estate management. During his undergraduate years, Trump kept a low profile academically, personally, and politically. According to his biographers Kranish and Fisher, he spent almost as much time working with his father in New York as he did teaching at the Wharton School. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1968 , he was not called up for military service and a possible deployment in the Vietnam War for medical reasons, after he had been deferred four times as a student after he had been certified as being fit . No further information can be found in the files; according to Trump's own statements in 2016, they were heel spurs .

family

Donald and Melania Trump during the 2016 election campaign

In 1977, Trump married model Ivana Zelníčková Winklmayr , who was originally from Czechoslovakia . From this marriage the sons Donald Jr. , called Don (* 1977), and Eric (* 1984) and the daughter Ivanka (* 1981) emerged. In 1990, Ivana filed for divorce on grounds of "cruel and inhuman treatment , " to which the media took lively interest. In a divorce affidavit, Ivana Trump admitted that her husband raped her in 1989. In a 2018 TV interview, she said she fabricated the allegations on the advice of her lawyers. From 1993 to 1999, Trump was married to American actress Marla Maples , with whom he has a daughter, Tiffany (b. 1993). In 2005 he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss ; Their son Barron was born in 2006, the youngest presidential son since John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Sons Don and Eric took over leadership of the family business, The Trump Organization , after their father took office as President . Daughter Ivanka, who was a successful model and entrepreneur, was one of the president's most important advisors , as was her husband Jared Kushner . Trump is a grandfather of ten .

Trump's older sister , Maryanne Trump Barry (b. 1937), served as a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals until February 2019 . His older brother Fred jr. (1938–1981), known as Freddy, worked in his father's company for a few years, but did not show the ambition and strict discipline that he demanded. He then embarked on a career as a pilot, which he eventually gave up because of his heavy drinking, and died of heart failure at the age of 43 .

religion

Trump was confirmed as a child in the Presbyterian Church . In October 2020, he declared that he would henceforth see himself as a non-denominational Christian .

business

Entry into the real estate industry

Trump's father Fred Trump had become a multi-millionaire by building residential buildings in the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and in Norfolk (Virginia) . Donald Trump was already working in his father's company, Trump Management , while he was studying and was able to fully join the company after graduating in 1968 thanks to being deferred from military service. As early as 1971, at the age of about 25, he took over the management of the company, while his 65-year-old father held the position of chairman . This put him in charge of 14,000 rental apartments, many of which were rented to low-income earners.

The environment that Donald Trump now had to deal with when he had to collect outstanding rent was alien and uncomfortable to him. He himself lived in luxurious and orderly circumstances in Queens, and at the Wharton School he had been among budding businessmen, many of whom came from families far wealthier than himself rented an apartment on the Upper East Side . However, he first became known to a broader public not because of his entrepreneurial successes, but as a defendant in a trial for racial discrimination . On October 16, 1973, his name appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and other newspapers, where his firm, Trump Management , was accused of systematically discriminating against black prospects in tenant selection .

Extensive racial segregation in the occupancy of apartment building complexes had long been customary and not punishable. The Federal Housing Administration , which is responsible for state subsidies for housing construction, had even advised against mixed ("inharmonious") occupancy. But by 1968, the Fair Housing Act had come into force, banning such discrimination nationwide. In New York, test persons of black and white skin were then sent to apply for the same apartments. Trump's company was particularly negative, including statements by employees that they had strict instructions to turn away black prospects or to limit them to residential complexes intended for them.

Given the charges against them both personally, Trump and his father went to a law firm, where they were advised to seek a settlement that would leave them unpunished. But that was out of the question for Donald Trump. He contacted the renowned lawyer Roy Cohn , from whom he had noticed an open letter in the New York Times to US Vice President Spiro Agnew , who had just resigned on charges of tax evasion . In it, Cohn accused Agnew of lacking courage and passionately advocated fighting back in such cases, as he himself had successfully done on several occasions. Cohn, who had achieved dubious fame as Joseph McCarthy 's right -hand man in the McCarthy era but was now one of the most influential figures in New York, agreed to champion Trump's case. The process dragged on for two years, and finally ended in a 1975 settlement that included a requirement to make a statement in the local press, at one's own expense, that people of all races were welcome as tenants in Trump apartments. This was widely perceived as a victory for the minorities.

Grand Hyatt New York, Donald Trump's first construction project

At that time, the city of New York was in a serious crisis. Funding for housing projects, which had previously been the Trumps' core business, had to be stopped in 1975 due to a lack of funds. But Donald Trump saw an opportunity in the crisis for his own plans in Manhattan. As part of the breakup of the bankrupt railroad company Penn Central , large areas and four once-renowned hotels in Manhattan were up for sale. One of these hotels, the run-down 62-story Commodore (now the Grand Hyatt New York), turned up no buyers. However, as a newcomer to the industry with no capital of his own and without the necessary contacts, Trump initially had poor prospects and his father was very skeptical but supported him nonetheless. Louise Sunshine, who had previously run fundraising for New York State Gov. Hugh Carey and recruited Fred Trump as one of the largest donors, provided him with the necessary contacts. The hotel chain Hyatt was interested in the project as a possible operator of the hotel after a restoration and modernization because they did not yet have a hotel in New York. Trump claimed to Penn Central that he already had an agreement with Hyatt, although he hadn't yet. The company then gave him a right of first refusal if he paid $250,000 in advance. Trump didn't have that money; even the fee for the architect Der Scutt had to be paid by his father. Still, Trump claimed to the city, whose approval he needed for the project, that he already had a contract with Penn Central, and was approved on that basis, despite better bids from other applicants. With a personal guarantee from his father for the necessary loans, he finally managed to acquire the building with Hyatt as a 50:50 partner and complete it in 1980 as a modern first-class hotel. Additionally, Abraham D. Beame , the outgoing mayor of New York and a longtime friend of Fred Trump, arranged for Donald Trump to be granted a tax exemption on the last day of his term in office in 1977 - the first such exemption for a private project in New York history – which should save it an estimated $400 million by 2017.

Also in 1977, Trump married his first wife Ivana (see family ). This happened at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which his parents had occasionally attended. The local pastor , Norman Vincent Peale , who performed the ceremony, was a well-known representative of positive thinking . Trump later described him as his only important advisor alongside his father. He soon brought his wife on board as vice president, and she was responsible for the interior design of the Grand Hyatt, Trump Tower and other buildings, although she had no previous experience in the field.

Trump Tower and the Rise to Fame

The corporate and residential Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan

For the next project, the prestigious Trump Tower, Trump acquired an old department store on Fifth Avenue to use the property. He drew renewed criticism from the press for having the sculptures on the Art Deco facade destroyed, despite promising the Metropolitan Museum to make the sculptures available to him in exchange for a tax-deductible donation receipt. For the demolition of the building, which was very complex due to the construction situation, he used numerous illegal Polish immigrants who had to work under very bad conditions and for low wages. To expedite construction of the new building, Trump - like many of his competitors at the time - turned to mafia -controlled companies and unions , with whom his attorney Cohn was well connected. Work on Trump Tower was unaffected by a wave of strikes in 1982. When the building was ready for occupancy in 1983, the costs had already been paid by selling the 266 apartments. Buyers included celebrities such as Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson . The stores in the five- story atrium have been leased for up to $1 million a year. Trump set up his office on the 26th floor, and the top three floors were converted into an extremely luxurious 53-room penthouse for the family of five.

This building, bearing his name, made Trump famous beyond the borders of New York. This also increased his creditworthiness, and in 1985 he was able to acquire the Mar-a-Lago property in Florida as an additional residence . He appeared on the cover of men's magazine GQ , and its owner , Si Newhouse , suggested that his publisher Random House publish a book with Trump as the purported author. The ghost -written The Art of the Deal became a bestseller in 1987 .

People from his environment at the time say that Trump's behavior has changed over the years. Whereas in the past his employees always had access to him, he now distanced himself and surrounded himself with people who applauded him and expressed no concern. This included three bodyguards. He also developed a tendency to outbursts of anger.

Donald and Ivana Trump with Ronald and Nancy Reagan and King Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia at his White House reception in 1985

On the other hand, he developed a keen interest in reporting about him. It became a daily routine in the morning to read everything that had been written or said about him in the last 24 hours. He usually answered inquiries from journalists himself and often immediately. And he tried to influence the type of reporting with positive incentives or with the threat of legal consequences. He was also interested in promoting his business, but above all in attracting as much attention as possible at all times. Since everything that had to do with him or Ivana soon seemed worth reporting, especially in the tabloid newspapers , he began to spread rumors – often as an alleged insider under false names such as “John Barron”. And he gained a lot of fans , especially among humble folk of the blue-collar class, who saw him as one of their own who had made it, and also among immigrants, for whom he was the embodiment of the American dream .

Atlantic City Casinos and the Troubled 1990s

Trump wanted to set up a casino at the Grand Hyatt , but his attempts to legalize gambling in New York were unsuccessful. But in 1977, gambling was legalized in the neighboring state of New Jersey . Trump licensed three casinos in Atlantic City and constructed what was then the city's tallest building, the 39-story Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino , which was completed in 1984. The following year he was able to purchase another building from the Hilton Corporation because Hilton did not receive a license for casinos. He named it the Trump Castle Hotel & Casino and, to everyone's surprise, entrusted its management to his wife Ivana. However, profits from the casino business remained well below Trump's expectations and declined. In 1988, Trump Castle actually made losses, and he then relieved his wife of responsibility.

In the case of the casino at Trump Plaza , Trump also accused the operating company, Harrah's of Las Vegas , of mismanagement. He was convinced that with a third, even larger casino hotel under his name, he could dominate the East Coast gambling scene. So in 1987 he acquired the only half-completed Taj Mahal . To his surprise, he was no longer able to get regular credit for the completion of the project – now heavily in debt – and therefore had to take out high-yield bonds .

Regardless of the growing financial problems, Trump bought his own airline in 1988, for which he took out further loans. For $365 million, he acquired Eastern Air Lines ' no-longer-profitable routes between New York, Washington and Boston , as well as the 21 associated Boeing 727s . His idea was to luxuriously upgrade the old machines and thus make the lines profitable again. He had leather seats installed, maple veneers and chrome hardware installed, and gold-plated sinks in the lavatories, all at a cost of about a million dollars for each aircraft. When flight operations began in June 1989 under the name Trump Shuttle , the company made losses right from the start, especially because of the debt burden.

The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City

On October 10, 1989, a few months before the Taj Mahal was scheduled to open , three of its key employees in the casino division were killed in a helicopter crash. Trump was shocked in a way his staff had never experienced, and later described it as the worst experience since his brother Freddy's death. He personally called the relatives and attended the funerals. Two weeks before the opening of the Taj Mahal , an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal quoting analyst Marvin Roffman as predicting that the casino-hotel would boom for a few months but not last because of the... required demand is not present in Atlantic City. Trump immediately responded by faxing Roffman's company, threatening legal action, demanding that Roffman be fired immediately or that an apology be provided. He also called Roffman personally and urged him to write a statement that the Taj Mahal would be one of the greatest achievements. Roffman was coerced by management to sign a revocation and then fired.

The opening of the "Taj" in April 1990 was grandiosely staged for a week. Over 100,000 attended, and at its peak, Trump performed with guest star Michael Jackson. The fact that the casino was closed by the responsible authorities on the second and third day because large quantities of game coins had disappeared was something Trump was able to turn positive in the media with the claim that the unexpectedly strong rush meant that the coins could not be counted. However, behind the scenes he was very upset and, among other things, accused two of the three senior staff members who had recently died of being responsible for the chaos that had ensued.

In June 1990, Trump was unable to service his debts for the first time. Its debt had grown to $3.2 billion, and of its 22 assets, only three were making a profit. A coalition of many creditors with whom he had been negotiating since spring came to the conclusion that everyone would lose if they dropped Trump, because the casinos in particular would be difficult to maintain without the connection with his name. In August 1990, they gave him the additional loans he needed in exchange for liens on large parts of his property, including his three casinos, his Mar-a-Lago estate, his megayacht Trump Princess , and his private plane. Trump also pledged to hire a chief financial officer to put the Trump Organization's finances in order. In this situation, his second book, Trump: Surviving at the Top , was again published by Random House.

Even at the height of the financial difficulties, when he could not make more and more payments due, Trump cultivated the image of the extremely successful businessman and billionaire day after day. In fact, in December 1990, he enlisted the help of his now 85-year-old father, who, to avoid forfeiting his gift, purchased $3.5 million in Trump Castle tokens that were never used. At this point, the Castle was the most vulnerable of its casinos, with customers migrating to the Taj Mahal , and already three debt service payments were overdue. Trump siphoned $10 million from the company without bank approval to pay for his first wife Ivana's divorce settlement, and at her wedding to Marla Maples in July 1991, Maples presented a $250,000 wedding ring on television. When asked by his angry financiers, he stated that the ring had only been borrowed.

In 1995, Trump, still heavily in debt, founded a public company and went public with it . This allowed investors to participate in the supposedly successful "Trump brand" while he himself ran the business as chairman and received annual compensation in the millions. The AG initially only owned the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, but in the following year it also acquired the other two heavily indebted casino hotels at inflated prices. That left her $1.7 billion in debt, contrary to what investors had expected, while Trump was included in Forbes' list of the richest Americans for the first time since 1989. As a result, the company made losses year after year due to debt servicing. The stock market price , which peaked at $35 in 1996, fell to 17 cents by 2005. Then trading was halted, and as part of a settlement, Trump reimbursed shareholders some of their losses. By 2009, however, he had earned a total of $44 million in managerial fees, and without the heavily indebted casinos that were never truly profitable, he officially rose again to become a billionaire.

The Apprentice

After the crisis of the 1990s, the Trump brand wasn't as pristine as it had appeared, but ultimately it was Trump's image that saved him. Now was an opportunity to greatly increase his reputation. In 2002, television producer Mark Burnett approached him with his plan for the reality show The Apprentice , for which he wanted Trump to be the star around whom and whose company everything would revolve. Trump had never been interested in reality TV, but was quickly persuaded that Burnett's project would offer tremendous opportunities to make the Trump brand even better known and loved. Burnett promised he only had to invest a few hours per episode, and Trump demanded that his private jet appear in every episode and that the Taj Mahal be shown as well. Even after this first meeting, the "deal" was perfect without Trump having sought any advice. And he secured a 50 percent stake in the project.

Finding a television company for the show proved difficult for Burnett, especially as Trump declined to work with CBS Corporation because they had previously been uninterested in the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants he hosted . Eventually, Burnett came to terms with NBC , who credited him as a successful producer of the reality series Survivor . However, according to NBC, Trump should only be signed for one year, followed by other well-known entrepreneurs. The show's concept was that 16 contestants competed to earn a one-year contract as employees of the Trump Organization. Trump was only given the rather modest role of explaining the task to be solved at the beginning of each episode and announcing at the end which candidate was eliminated from the race.

Trump with former basketball player Dennis Rodman at The Celebrity Apprentice , 2009

After the first episode it was already clear that the script had to be changed. Trump had shown amazing talent as a host and NBC executives as well as the 20 million viewers were enthralled by his performance. Trump did not stick to the detailed specifications, as is usual in such shows, but improvised from the start. His saying "You're fired." But he soon showed other sides as well, sometimes appearing thoughtful and insecure, conferring with the employees sitting next to him and sometimes following their advice. And he quickly learned how to build up an arc of suspense and evoke strong emotions in the candidates. Viewership grew to 27 million over the course of the first season.

Thanks to the popularity of The Apprentice , Trump was soon in high demand as a guest on talk shows , where he began speaking on political issues. In retrospect, the success of his show, of which he remained the star until 2015, is considered a prerequisite for the chance to win the presidency. In June 2015, following his controversial statements as a presidential candidate (see below), NBC renounced Trump's future involvement with The Apprentice .

Marketing of the Trump brand

In parallel with the preparation of the first season of The Apprentice , Trump launched another project: he wanted to launch men's clothing under his name. With great personal commitment and under the impression of the success of the first season of his show, he managed to win the manufacturer Phillips-Van Heusen as a licensee . produced under the Calvin Klein brand. Licensing involved no cost or risk and, in addition to the ubiquity of his name he sought above all, it also provided him with income in the form of royalties. He set up a separate department for this in Trump Tower , and by 2016 the number of licenses issued had grown to 25. These include the Trump Ice mineral water and the perfumes Trump Success and Donald Trump the Fragrance .

2002 saw the release of the licensed video game Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon , rated very poorly in 2010s retrospectives. Still, it was selling well at the time of its release.

In 2005, Trump introduced his project called Trump University . These were seminars that were supposed to convey how one could become rich as an investor in the real estate market. Trump promised to hire the best experts as lecturers and to help develop the teaching content himself, but neither of these came to pass. The first event was free and, according to the presenter's instructions, was used to heavily promote paid seminars ranging in price from $1,495 to $34,995. Interested parties had to provide detailed information about their financial circumstances when registering, which was supposedly intended to be able to give them personal advice, but was actually evaluated to identify suitable addressees for the most expensive offer, Trump Gold Elite . Another promise was that Trump would not earn anything from this project, just pass on knowledge and would donate the profits to charity. That didn't happen either. By the time it closed in 2010, Trump Gold Elite had recruited almost 600 people . Many of them later asked for a refund because they felt they had been cheated.

At the same time, Trump began issuing naming licenses for construction projects in the United States and other countries. The impression was given that these were projects of the Trump Organization , when in fact he was only collecting fees for using his name. He also founded Trump Mortgage (“Trump Mortgage ”) and spread great optimism about the real estate market, even though the end of the boom was already in sight. When the financial crisis began in 2007 with the bursting of the real estate bubble in the USA , many of the projects bearing Trump's name got into great difficulties, while he, as a mere licensor, sometimes sued the entrepreneurs concerned when they asked for a postponement of the payments owed to him. Conversely, many small investors who had bought apartments in trust in Trump in an unbuilt and only licensed condominium sued him for fraud. The numerous legal disputes dragged on for years until Trump put an end to them in 2016.

Trials by and against Trump University, Trump Foundation and Trump Organization

Trump and his companies were (as of 2016) involved in over 3,500 lawsuits, 1,900 of them as plaintiffs. In the same year, the New York Attorney General initiated investigations into the management courses he had been offering since 2005 under the name “ Trump University ” (see above) “for operating without authorization and deceiving customers”. Trump is said to have offered non-degree courses and still made about $40 million by 2011. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked for the money back. Trump renamed the "university" to the "Trump Entrepreneur Initiative." In 2013, Schneiderman accused Trump of using "his fame" and personally influencing people in commercials with false promises to spend tens of thousands of dollars on classes they never got; there were several lawsuits against him. In mid-November 2016, shortly after the presidential election, Trump agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $25 million to compensate more than 6,000 course participants.

In September 2016, the New York Attorney General opened preliminary proceedings against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was designed as a non-profit organization, for violations of IRS rules and improper handling of donations. Independent research found that Trump has not contributed to the foundation since 2008. Trump gave third-party donations for a life-size portrait of himself ($20,000), for a football kit signed by Tim Tebow ($12,000) and in 2013 for an illegal payment ($25,000) to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi , which then dropped the investigation into Trump University in Florida. On December 24, 2016, Trump announced that he would dissolve the Foundation in order to avoid possible conflicts with his role as US President.

In June 2017, business magazine Forbes reported that Trump had channeled donations made since 2011 to his son Eric's charitable foundation for children with cancer into his own company. The donations did not go to a children's hospital as announced, but to the Trump Organization or other Trump-affiliated foundations that spent the money on events at Trump's golf courses. Trump allegedly violated tax laws and regulations against self-dealing and deceiving investors. In June 2018, the state of New York sued Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and his daughter Ivanka for allegedly illegally using funds from his family foundation.

A New York District Attorney and the New York Attorney General Letitia James are investigating (as of November 2020) against the Trump Organization and others. on suspicion of banking and insurance fraud , tax evasion and manipulation of business results. In May 2021, the Trump Organization was notified that the civil investigation had been expanded to include a criminal investigation. In early July 2021, the New York District Attorney filed charges against the Trump Organization on charges of tax evasion (over 15 years), accounting fraud , conspiracy and grand theft. Donald Trump was not personally accused.

assets

Trump's private jet since 2011: a converted Boeing 757 , built in 1991

Ever since Trump had achieved some notoriety as an entrepreneur, he has consistently cited his wealth as evidence of exceptional business acumen, and on this he eventually based his claim of being particularly well-qualified for the presidency. Over the years, however, his statements about his fortune have never been verifiable and therefore a subject of controversy. When The New York Times ran an article about him in 1976 , he claimed to be worth $200 million. In the same year he put his taxable income at just under $25,000, and in 1978 and 1979 he reported total negative income of $3.8 million. During that period, he borrowed $35 million from Chase Manhattan Bank and $7.5 million from his father.

During the 1980s, information about Trump's wealth increased significantly. When Forbes magazine launched its annual list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982, Trump put his fortune at $500 million; However, Forbes listed him and his father as only estimated at 200 million between them. This value increased from year to year and reached a maximum in 1989 with 1.7 billion. That year, it was revealed that Trump was multibillion in debt, and Forbes downgraded him to 500 million, removing him from the list. Instead, the magazine published an article detailing his debts and acknowledging that he was having serious problems making payments due ( cash flow ). He has not appeared in the Forbes list for six years in a row (see above: Atlantic City Casinos and the Troubled 1990s ).

Throughout his career, Trump took legal action against people and organizations that were critical of his self-portrayal as a very successful entrepreneur and his alleged wealth. One example that has garnered particular attention is his conflict with New York Times writer Timothy O'Brien. This was expressed in his 2005 book TrumpNation. The Art of Being The Donald , based on extensive interviews with Trump and employees of his company, is skeptical about the circulating claims of Trump's fortune (from 1.7 to 9.5 billion). So O'Brien interviewed three unnamed insiders who put the fortune at between $150 million and $250 million. A week before the book's publication, Trump learned of these details and the intention of a pre-publication in the NYT. He arranged for his attorney to write a letter to the book's publisher, calling it inaccurate, malicious, and defamatory, and requesting that the NYT submit the proposed article in advance for error correction. The newspaper was undeterred and ran the article with the headline What's he really worth? (How rich is he really?). After the book's publication, Trump sued O'Brien and his publisher for an estimated $5 billion. The legal battle dragged on until 2011 and ended in Trump's defeat. In this context, it became known that Trump's lender Deutsche Bank also did not classify him as a billionaire, but valued him at $788 million. Trump also rejected that.

When announcing his presidential candidacy ( see below ) in June 2015, Trump stated he was worth more than $8 billion, which he increased to over $10 billion in July 2015. The difference should be due to an initially inadequate valuation of some properties. Based on publicly available data, Forbes estimated Trump's fortune at $4.1 billion in June 2015, and media outlet Bloomberg at $2.9 billion in July 2015. In Forbes ' The World's Billionaires list of March 20 In 2017, Trump fell from 324th to 544th with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion. Losses in the value of his real estate, especially in New York, were given as the reason. In February 2018, Forbes estimated Trump's fortune at $3.1 billion. Of that, $1.5 billion was real estate in New York City, $500 million in real estate outside of New York City, $560 million in golf clubs, $180 million in branded businesses, and $290 million in cash and personal assets.

Unlike most other US leaders, Trump has not published his tax returns. In May 2017, he submitted a financial self-assessment to the Office of Government Ethics , showing that he had at least $1.4 billion in assets with at least $310 million in liabilities - likely more than $500 million -dollars - faced. The Wall Street Journal , on the other hand, wrote in January 2017 that he owed around USD 2.5 billion to Deutsche Bank alone; other major lenders include Wells Fargo , JPMorgan Chase , Fidelity Investments , Prudential plc and The Vanguard Group .

According to Trump, he owes his wealth solely to his business acumen. His father only loaned him $1 million in seed money, which he paid back with interest. In contrast, research published by The New York Times in October 2018 revealed that he has received more than $400 million in inducements from his father's fortune in a variety of ways since his early childhood.

According to research by The New York Times , Trump paid no income taxes to the US Internal Revenue Service in 10 of the 15 years from 2005 to 2020 because he said he had more losses than earnings. The NYT also stated that Trump claimed $70,000 in hairstyling expenses during his years hosting the TV show The Apprentice . He also has $421 million in outstanding debt (as of September 2020), according to the NYT, mostly stemming from loans from his Trump National Doral Miami golf hotel and his hotel in the Old Post Office Pavilion , for which he is personally liable . Trump keeps identity of creditors secret; this was discussed in the 2020 US presidential election campaign .

The Financial Times wrote shortly before the US presidential election on November 3, 2020 , Trump had at least 1.1 billion US dollars in debt. In December 2021, a federal judge ruled that Trump should turn his tax records over to a US Congressional committee .

Politics before the presidency

Political activities since the 1980s

Donald Trump's relationship with politicians has long been geared towards his business interests. As his father had always done, he tried hard to establish good relationships with politicians who might be useful to him one day, regardless of their political positions. The decisive factor was which of the candidates from whom inquiries came he classified as the winner types. It certainly happened that he supported both sides in an election campaign. He circumvented the restrictions on donations to politicians and parties by e.g. B. ran through various subsidiaries. From 1995 to 2016, he donated over $3 million to candidates from both major parties.

From 1984 onwards, on various occasions , he identified nuclear disarmament as the most important political issue he wanted to take care of himself. This was prompted by conversations with his uncle, John G. Trump , a respected physicist who died in 1985. This requires extraordinary negotiating skills, which none of the politicians he knows have. This suggestion soon became widely known and mostly greeted with amusement. Nobel Peace and Disarmament activist Bernard Lown , who was one of the first Americans to the new Soviet rulers Mikhail Gorbachev had met personally asked Trump 1986 for talks in the Trump Tower and told him he wanted Plenipotentiary be US ambassador to the USSR and the End the Cold War "within an hour". The Soviet ambassador to the UN invited Trump to Moscow . At the beginning of July 1987, on the American national holiday, Trump traveled to Moscow.

Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with then-President
Ronald Reagan at a White House reception (1987)

In July 1987, Trump first registered as a Republican supporter and published large-format newspaper ads with political messages, including demands that Western allies should no longer be protected.

In 1989, he had a full-page ad in the New York Times canceled that advocated anti-racism. The occasion was the rape of a white woman by 12 young black men on April 18 in Central Park. The case polarized the media: some, like Trump, agitated against blacks and fueled racism, while others warned of lynching.

Logo from Donald Trump's first presidential campaign in 2000

He hit the headlines with his thesis that the US was headed for a "disaster" and that countries like Japan , Iran and Saudi Arabia were laughing at it, and his soon-to-be-followed book The Art of the Deal became a bestseller. In October 1999 he joined Ross Perot's Reform Party and ran as its candidate in the party's internal primaries for the 2000 presidential campaign . In this context, too, he published a book ( The America We Deserve ) in which he took up Perot's rejection of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in particular his warning against the exodus of jobs to Mexico. He won the Michigan and California primaries, but then dropped out of the campaign. In August 2001, Trump registered as a Democrat, and for 2004 and 2008 he indicated a possible run against George W. Bush . Since his show The Apprentice also started in 2004 and he had already promoted a book before, his comments of this kind were hardly taken seriously. After supporting John McCain as the 2008 presidential nominee , he re-registered as a Republican in September 2009. From December 2011 to April 2012, Trump did not register any party affiliation on the electoral list, only to register again as a Republican – to this day. Until 2012, he distributed his party donations almost equally between the two major parties. He also donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and had long-standing relationships with Hillary Clinton .

Before the 2012 presidential election , Trump again publicly toyed with the idea of ​​running as a candidate; in May 2011 he canceled. A few weeks earlier, he had urged President Obama to publish his birth certificate, temporarily leading the conspiracy theory Birther movement, which challenged Obama's legitimacy as president because he was allegedly born in Africa (see Opposition to Barack Obama ). In doing so, he broke the taboo that had been in force until then against using racist statements in politics and took advantage of widespread resentment. The Washington Post invited him as a guest to the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30, 2011 because of his resulting notoriety as a political figure - he was the most popular Republican candidate in nationwide polls in mid-April . There, a well-prepared Obama, as the main speaker, presented his birth certificate on large screens in a pompous staging and then made fun of Trump with lots of laughter, for example sneering that he was now certainly happy to be able to devote himself to more important things such as the questions of whether the moon landing really took place or what really happened in Roswell . Trump increasingly lost his composure, finally blushed and fled the event. This embarrassment was seen by all as the end of his political ambitions.

Previous Positions

Trump's political positions used to be well to the left of the Republican mainstream; he campaigned for universal health insurance, for tax increases and the right to abortion ( pro-choice ), spoke out against the Iraq war in 2004 and described the Democrat Bill Clinton as successful, but the Republican George W. Bush as the worst of all US Presidents.

In a September 2015 analysis, The Economist magazine concluded that Trump embraces ideas from across the political spectrum: on immigration policy, he is to the right of the Republican mainstream; on the other hand, Trump criticized the activities of hedge funds and lobbyists, praised the state health care systems of other countries and sometimes took protectionist positions in terms of economic policy . After the election, he qualified some of the positions from the election campaign; Speaking of some of his key campaign promises, Trump said, "They don't matter that much anymore."

The conservative historian Bruce Bartlett judged in June 2017 that Trump was much more extreme than expected as president - the moderate Republicans had given up all resistance and his political agenda was so far to the right that Ronald Reagan looked like a left-liberal next to Trump.

foreign policy

In 1987, in full-page newspaper advertisements, Trump published political statements according to which states – using the example of Japan and Saudi Arabia – should pay for their protection by the USA. In March 1990, Trump explained in Playboy that states like Japan and West Germany had deprived the US of self-respect: "Their products are better because they are so heavily subsidized," while the US, with its multi-billion dollar defense budget, "makes sure that they don't fall short in 15 minutes to be swept off the face of the earth". Trump then: "Our allies are making billions by linking us." He described the transatlantic military alliance NATO as "obsolete" during the election campaign, a position he vacated after his election in April 2017. However, he is pushing for an increase in the defense spending of the member states - especially Germany, as he emphasized during Angela Merkel's inaugural visit in March 2017 - and calls for a reorientation towards the fight against terrorism.

Trump and Petro Poroshenko , June 20, 2017

For years, Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a leader and called good relations between him and Putin good for the United States. He congratulated Vladimir Putin in a letter when he was named Person of the Year by Time magazine in 2007, describing himself as a big Putin fan . In addition, in 2013 he invited Putin to the annual Miss Universe pageant he owned at the time, which was held in Moscow that year.

Regarding the Crimean crisis , Trump said in the summer of 2016 that he had heard that the people in Crimea would rather be with Russia , but that after Trump's election victory Putin would not dare to invade Ukraine (which had already happened by then). Following allegations against Trump's campaign team of colluding with Russian representatives against Hillary Clinton, Trump criticized Russia's occupation of Crimea in February 2017. Trump's April 2017 decision to launch missiles into Syria reinforced the changing stance on Russia. In December 2017, Trump agreed to an arms shipment to Ukraine that his predecessor Obama had refused .

In February 2016, Trump declared that he would reintroduce waterboarding and "a hell of a lot worse" in the war on terror, while in March 2016 he stated he would not direct the United States armed forces to violations of laws and treaties to be bound.

education

Trump would like to leave all powers in the education system with the states ; nationwide requirements are too bureaucratic and not very efficient - despite high education expenditures, the United States performs poorly in studies compared to other western industrialized countries. Trump is committed to empowering students to choose their own school and has announced that he will invest $20 billion in a pro-competitive voucher system to enable poorer children in particular to go to better schools. Trump also supports charter schools .

immigration and refugee policies

After the 2012 presidential election , Trump said the defeat of Republican candidate Mitt Romney was related to his tough stance on immigration. In November 2012, Trump described Romney's central program item, to get illegal immigrants to leave the country of their own free will ("self-deportation"), as "crazy".

In mid-August 2015, Trump presented his first political position paper in his own presidential campaign, which proposed tough measures on immigration : all 11 million illegal immigrants should be deported. A continuous wall was to be built on the border between the United States and Mexico , and Trump wanted the Mexican government to pay for it. In addition, the previously applicable birthplace principle of US citizenship law should be abandoned (see anchor child ).

Trump and Angela Merkel, March 17, 2017

Trump's stance on Muslim immigrants has sparked controversy. On December 8, 2015, Trump attracted international attention when, after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino , he accused "large sections of the Muslim population" of hating Americans and called for a temporary entry ban for all Muslims. Trump's statements were sharply criticized by celebrities and politicians, including party colleagues. Within a few days, more than 550,000 people in Great Britain signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from entering the country. Trump also advocated the establishment of a nationwide central registry for Muslims in the United States. After initially supporting the admission of additional Syrian refugees in the refugee crisis in autumn 2015 , he declared a few weeks later that he wanted to deport all Syrian refugees from the USA (literally: "they're going back"). He called the refugee policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the time “crazy” (“ insane ”).

Energy policy, climate protection and nature conservation

In November 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter that the concept of global warming was created by the Chinese to make US industrial manufacturing uncompetitive. On the occasion of Pope Francis ' visit to the United States at the end of September 2015, Trump stated that he did not believe in anthropogenic global warming and that climate change was not an urgent problem but a natural phenomenon. He thinks climate protection requirements for US companies are wrong. After the election, Trump told The New York Times that he sees a link between human activity and climate change , questions how strong that link is, and reflects on how costly climate change is for US businesses and competitiveness. He takes a close look at climate protection agreements and is open to them. Shortly before, the Chinese government had criticized Trump's previous position and announced that it would definitely continue its own climate protection policy, which experts described as a possible shift in global weighting in this policy area in favor of emerging countries.

On energy policy, in May 2016, Trump announced an "about-turn" with relaxation of environmental regulations and a return to fossil fuels. He named the main goal of making the USA independent of imported energy sources, namely from the OPEC area . For this he wants to use previously untapped deposits, especially on and off the coast. To this end, he wants to lift all the restrictions introduced under Obama and thus create at least half a million new jobs every year and at the same time make energy cheaper. Trump rejected wind energy . In 2012, he tweeted that wind turbines were an "environmental and aesthetic disaster" after losing a legal battle to build a wind farm near one of his Scottish golf courses. In November 2016, he claimed wind turbines kill birds , require heavy subsidies, and are not made in the US, but mostly in Germany and China.

Same-sex marriage

Trump was critical of the introduction of homosexual marriages , but said the decision should be left to the individual states. After the Supreme Court's ruling on nationwide equality with heterosexual marriage ( Obergefell v. Hodges ), he announced that the decision must now be accepted and is no longer suitable as an election campaign issue. In early September 2015, he asked Kentucky Administrator Kim Davis to stop refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Davis had attracted international attention by refusing to do so and had been jailed for a period of time for her conduct. Other presidential candidates, such as Mike Huckabee , supported Davis and criticized Trump for his stance.

abortion

In his book The America We Deserve , published for the 2000 presidential election , Trump advocated the possibility of abortions (" pro-choice "). Years later, he reiterated this point of view in an interview. During his 2016 presidential campaign, however, Trump declared that he was opposed to “abortion” (“ pro-life ”). In the event of a health hazard to the pregnant woman, after rape and in the case of incest , he says he wants to allow exceptions.

social security and health policy

Like all Republicans in the 2016 election campaign, Trump called for a reversal of the healthcare reform introduced under President Obama in 2010 ("Obamacare"). This worsens the quality of the healthcare system and leads to excessive prices. In his opinion, it also unilaterally favors the insurance groups. Instead, Trump advocates a so-called free market plan that aims to reduce costs and improve quality by increasing competition in the healthcare sector. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly stated that he wanted to overturn and replace Obama's health care reform.

On the other hand, Trump rejected cuts in the areas of Social Security , Medicare and Medicaid during the election campaign, which set him apart from most Republican competitors in 2016. However, he changed his position in office (see Health ). However, he advocated making social security programs more efficient. Trump campaigned for better care for veterans .

taxes and finances

In August 2015, Trump clearly distanced himself from his Republican competitors in terms of tax policy, all of whom demanded a supply-side reduction in tax rates for the wealthy and high-income earners or a uniform tax rate (a flat tax ) (cf. trickle-down theory ). Trump claimed he wanted to simplify the tax system, tax the rich — including himself — more heavily, and ease the burden on the middle class . The conservative media in particular criticized these proposals as populism . He also wants to fight tax evasion more intensively and close tax loopholes.

After his nomination as a presidential candidate, Trump presented a new tax concept that also provides relief for the rich in line with the party line. Trump claimed his tax plan was revenue-neutral. He wants to achieve a balanced federal budget within a few years by increasing efficiency in the public sector and in the military, as well as additional income from strong economic growth. Trump's tax concept was dependent on other policy areas such as the health system, from which Trump wants to generate funds for tax cuts. In April 2017, he had a different plan drawn up, the implementation of which was considered very questionable.

Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order to review the Dodd-Frank Act . Trump had described this banking regulation law , which Obama signed in 2010 in response to the financial crisis , as a "disaster".

death penalty

In full-page newspaper ads in 1989-90, Trump — attacking then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch over a rape case involving the Central Park Five and Ed Koch — called for a return to the death penalty; “these robbers and murderers” that Trump wants to hate should “be forced to suffer” and serve as a deterrent. At that time, five Harlem youths, ages 14 to 16 (four African American and one Hispanic ), were falsely convicted of raping a white investment banker and served up to 13 years in prison until the actual perpetrator confessed. During the 2015 election campaign, Trump declared that as president he would make the death penalty mandatory for police murders. Whether this is covered by current law is debatable. A 1976 Supreme Court decision eliminated the mandatory use of the death penalty for certain offences.

gun law

Trump has often shifted his position on specific aspects of gun law in the United States over the years . In 2000, he expressed relatively moderate; he later advocated a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment , which grants US citizens the right to own guns. Like the majority of Republicans, he rejects tightening of gun laws. He has claimed they are ineffective in preventing acts of violence. He blamed inadequate therapeutic options and preventive measures for killing sprees and claimed that violent criminals would specifically choose facilities where carrying weapons is prohibited ("gun free zones") for their crimes, which is why no one could stop those who ran amok early by using counter-violence . After the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015, Trump claimed that strict gun laws in France were partly to blame for the high death toll.

business

Trump says he supports the free market , but believes that US companies should move their foreign production facilities back to the United States under the motto "America First"; this is to be provoked, among other things, by high punitive tariffs for imports and tax breaks. In addition, allegedly unfavorable trade agreements such as the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) would have to be renegotiated. These positions have been criticized in conservative circles such as the Club for Growth as protectionist and "contempt" for free enterprise .

During the election campaign, Trump advocated raising the minimum wage to at least $10, but would like to leave this up to the individual states.

Presidential candidacy 2015/16

Trump speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (2015)

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican Party in the November 8, 2016 election at Trump Tower . He campaigned with the sloganMake America Great Again ”, which Ronald Reagan had previously used in 1980.

The election campaign was seen as extraordinarily controversial and divisive. During Trump's appearances, violence erupted between his supporters and opponents on a scale unprecedented in recent US primary elections. Trump focused on populist issues such as reducing immigration, especially of Muslims, as well as trade and foreign policy isolation ( protectionism and isolationism ), and attacked his rivals personally. He spread conspiracy theories and called for his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned (slogan: "Lock Her Up"). His simple rhetoric, provocative demands, and confrontational style polarized (see Language and style ). As an experienced and well-known media figure, he received far more media attention than any of his competitors, particularly through his routine use of social media to address his followers directly (see relationship with the media ). From the beginning he dominated the election campaign and from the end of July 2015 he continuously led the polls for the internal party primary for the Republicans. A clear majority always had a negative attitude towards him.

Trump's lack of political experience was used against him, but worked to his advantage with his supporters—who were overwhelmingly disaffected, more rural, uneducated whites (see supporters as part of a “silent majority” )—: Trump portrayed himself as an outsider, his personal Prosperity secured its independence to assert itself against the political elites portrayed as corrupt and aloof, which was expressed in Trump's further slogan "Drain the Swamp". Not only Trump's political opponents and many left-liberal media, but also many influential groups and politicians of the Republican Party were skeptical to negative towards Trump and did not count on the possibility of victory for a long time. Trump defused opposition within the party by signing a declaration of loyalty on September 3, 2015, but then repeatedly considered an independent candidacy.

In the primaries beginning February 1, 2016, Trump asserted himself largely unchallenged and on May 26, 2016 he achieved the majority of the delegate votes for the July 2016 nominating convention in Cleveland , at which he was elected the Republican presidential nominee with his running mate Mike Pence against Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine .

Allegations of racism and sexism

Anti Trump Demonstration. San Francisco, November 2016

Trump has repeatedly been accused of racist and sexist statements. He usually responded to criticism of these with increased aggression. Trump, for example, caused outrage in his speech at the start of the election campaign when he said about Mexican immigrants who bring drugs, crime and are rapists - "and some, I suppose, are good people too". Trump repeatedly failed to distance himself from Ku Klux Klan supporter David Duke , who had pledged his support to Trump. At the end of May 2016, after a criminal case against Trump for fraud by his Trump University became the focus of attention, Trump attacked the responsible federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel and declared him not neutral because of his "Mexican heritage". Lawyers and politicians - including from Trump's own party - sharply criticized this; Paul Ryan , for example, described his statement as a "textbook example" of racism. After the parents of the Muslim US soldier Humayun Khan , who died in the Iraq war , appeared at the Democratic National Convention and criticized Trump's statements against immigration and Islam, Trump attacked them personally and alleged, for example, that Khan's mother had said nothing there because she prescribed their religion.

In the first televised debate of the August 2015 primary, host Megyn Kelly accused Trump of making obscene remarks (“fat pigs,” “bitches,” “sluts,” and “disgusting animals”) to women he didn’t like for years. A day later, Trump attributed her critical questions to her bleeding, which was generally interpreted as a sexist reference to menstrual problems and caused outrage. Even more attention was drawn in October 2016 to video recordings of a 2005 conversation between Trump and Billy Bush , in which Trump said, among other things: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful people - I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. just kiss I don't even wait And if you're a star, they let you do it. you can do anything […] grab her by the pussy. You can do anything." ("I'm automatically attracted to beautiful - I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. […] Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."). The publication led to massive criticism of Trump, including within the party, who, contrary to his habit, apologized. About fifty of the top Republican officials and elected officials withdrew their support in one day; some urged him to withdraw from the campaign. Then- First Lady Michelle Obama said Trump's comments "shook her to the core": "The shameful comments about our bodies, the disdain for our ambitions and our intellect, the belief that you can do whatever you want with a woman - this is cruel. It's scary.” The justification put forward that it was “everyday locker room chatter” was “an insult to decent men everywhere”. In the weeks that followed, several women made it public that they had been sexually harassed by Trump (see allegations of sexual assault ).

supporters and funders

Billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah were among Trump's most significant donors and supporters in the 2016 presidential election . Mercer, a reclusive computer scientist and hedge fund manager, has been pursuing the goal of overthrowing the political establishment for about a decade. To this end, he used new methods, such as those he had used very successfully in the field of hedge funds, to study public opinion and found that there was a growing willingness among the population to elect an outsider as president. In 2016, the Mercers felt the time was right. After initially massively supporting the candidate Ted Cruz , who was eliminated in the primaries - as an outsider within the establishment - they then backed Trump. In both cases they used a lobby organization ( Super-PAC ), in which they invested a total of 13 million dollars. After the resignation of Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort , they also succeeded in getting Stephen Bannon , whom they had long promoted as the main financiers of Breitbart News , as well as Kellyanne Conway , who had previously headed the Super PAC, and David Bossie , who with his Mercer -financed organization Citizens United , which initiated the judicial enforcement of the publication of Hillary Clinton's email traffic, in Trump's team.

Bannon was able to persuade the Mercers to invest $10 million in the then-insignificant Breitbart website back in 2011, in exchange for being appointed to its board of directors. In the same year, the former film producer had a first meeting with Donald Trump in Trump Tower, where it was about his thoughts on running against Obama in 2012. Bannon got the impression that Trump's ability to excite crowds might be apt to shake up American politics. When Andrew Breitbart died unexpectedly in 2012, Bannon took over the management of the company and, financed by the Mercers, expanded it into the most important platform of the alt-right movement. He also gave Trump the opportunity to spread his topics such as Obama's alleged birth in Africa or his theses on immigration policy away from the mainstream media. Bannon's Government Accountability Institute , also founded in 2012 with Peter Schweizer and financed by the Mercers , was very successful in dismantling Trump's competitors Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush , e.g. through the production of the film Clinton Cash , which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and which follows the alleged criminal activities of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In January 2017, some advisors from the campaign team founded the non-profit organization America First Policies , which, unlike super PACs (and other political action committees ), does not have to disclose its donors and in June 2017 spent one million dollars for an advertising campaign against the Senator Dean Heller (see “Health” above).

election victory

Up until Election Day on November 8, 2016, most observers believed Clinton's narrow victory was likely based on aggregated polls. However, Trump was able to win some formerly “blue” states and important swing states such as Florida in the “ Rust Belt ” of the Midwest . Clinton received more votes (48.18%) than Trump (46.09%) ; Trump received more electoral votes than Clinton. According to investigative journalist Michael Wolff , who referred to undeniable statements by anonymous White House employees, Trump himself had no intention of becoming president and was surprised by the result on election night (see also explanations for the unexpected victory ).

Trump delivered a victory speech in New York on the night of Election Day, emphasizing that he wanted to be “the President of all Americans.” Protests against the election of Donald Trump erupted under the rapidly circulating slogan "Not My President." There were also occasional violent riots by demonstrators. Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a recount of votes in the states of Wisconsin , Pennsylvania and Michigan . Only in Wisconsin was the application granted, the recount brought Clinton no advantage.

In the electoral college vote on December 19, 2016, Trump won the 58th election for President of the United States by 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 227 (" Electoral Vote ").

Allegations of collusion with Russian authorities

During the 2016 election campaign, allegations were first made that Donald Trump's election campaign colluded with Russian secret services to harm his opponent Hillary Clinton. After the election, a dossier by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele was released on Jan. 10, 2017, which compiled unverified evidence that Trump officials had met with Russians to coordinate attacks such as the release of Clinton campaign emails. In addition, Trump could be blackmailed through prior surveillance. When it became known that Trump's National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn had met with Russian officials several times during the campaign, received payments and failed to disclose this - a possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act - he resigned after three weeks in office on March 13 February 2017 back. According to media reports, the secret attempts by Trump's employees to persuade the State Department to relax sanctions against Russia then ended .

In March 2017, FBI Director James B. Comey made it public that his agency had begun investigating members of Trump's campaign team in this matter before the election. At the same time, four committees of the congress with different focuses and competences examined the topic. While the Republican majority in the House Intelligence Committee did not find any Russian influence on the election campaign, both Democrats and Republicans confirmed this in the corresponding Senate committee in May 2018. People close to Trump who apparently had contacts with Russia during the election campaign include the later Attorney General Jeff Sessions , who failed to state so in his Senate hearing before taking office, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort , who previously worked for a Ukrainian oligarch, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner , and his attorney Michael Cohen . In early July 2017, it became known that Trump's son Don had arranged a meeting with a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections in Trump Tower in June 2016 because, according to published emails, he had been promised incriminating material about Clinton. Manafort and Kushner also attended the meeting; this proves that Trump's close circle met with collusive intent with Russians. Donald Trump himself apparently formulated his son's associated press statement. According to CNN, Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen claimed in July 2018 that Donald Trump knew about the meeting in advance. Cohen was convicted of, among other things, false testimony (at the special investigation) and two counts of illegal campaign finance in December 2018.

On March 4, 2017, Trump accused his predecessor Obama via Twitter of wiretapping phones in Trump Tower during Trump's campaign. Trump drew comparisons to McCarthyism and the Watergate affair , and called Obama a "bad (or sick) guy!"). A spokesman for Obama denied the allegation. The chairmen of the congressional intelligence committees said they had no evidence of this either, which the then FBI Director James Comey confirmed in a hearing on March 20, 2017. In early September 2017, the Justice Department announced there was no evidence of wiretapping in Trump Tower. The legal blog Lawfare called Trump's unfounded claims an abuse of power.

On May 9, 2017 , Trump fired FBI Director Comey , effective immediately. In the days before, he had repeatedly criticized Comey and the FBI on Twitter for the Russia investigations, which put pressure on Trump and his personal and political environment. Comey had recently requested more resources to investigate Russian interference in the US presidential election. Observers spoke of an attack on democracy and drew parallels to the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973 during the Watergate affair . Trump's reasons for the dismissal changed several times; a draft cover letter he wrote himself apparently referred to Comey's refusal to end the Russia probe.

The morning after Comey's sacking, Trump received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak in the Oval Office , whose meetings with National Security Advisor Flynn were partly responsible for his resignation. The timing of this visit has been criticized as the American media was not allowed while photos of the meeting were released by the Russian news agency TASS . At this appointment, Trump disclosed secret service information to his guests that was subject to strict secrecy. He admitted to having disclosed counter-terrorism information on humanitarian grounds, which he was entitled to do. At that meeting, according to the New York Times , Trump spoke about the firing like this: “[Comey] was crazy, a real nutcase. I was under a lot of pressure because of Russia. It's gone."

According to the New York Times , at a meeting in early February 2017, Trump tried to persuade Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, which the White House denied, but did not clear up Comey before the US Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, 2017 and additionally Trump the accused of lying. The Washington Post reported that in March 2017 Trump urged intelligence chiefs Dan Coats ( Director of National Intelligence ) and Michael S. Rogers ( National Security Agency ) to state publicly that there was no evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia; both had rejected this as inappropriate.

On May 17, 2017, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as a Special Counsel with full investigative mandate and access to resources for the Russia investigation, a request specifically requested by Democratic congressmen. Trump is represented by different lawyers after at least six law firms rejected the case because of doubts about Trump's willingness to advise. On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller had opened a criminal investigation into Trump for obstruction of justice. Trump called the investigation the “biggest witch hunt” in US political history.

The investigation, in particular of financial relations and the question of whether Russian authorities have been promised that sanctions will be lifted, has not yet come to any conclusion; Trump himself has neither knowledge nor an order for these contacts. Before the election, Russian authorities had shared that they had potentially harmful information about Trump's finances. The investigation into the financial circumstances of people close to Trump has brought allegations of money laundering , which have been made against the Trump Taj Mahal casino in particular , into focus. Beginning in July 2017, Trump threatened to attack members of Mueller's investigative team for possible conflicts of interest and warned them not to delve into the Trump family's financial affairs. In late October 2017, Manafort faced charges including conspiracy against the US and money laundering, while Trump's foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos admitted to having misrepresented his Russia contacts to the FBI in January 2017. Also guilty of false testimony were Flynn (November 2017) and Rick Gates (February 2018); they appear to be working with Mueller.

On January 24, 2018, Trump declared his willingness to be questioned by Mueller, even under oath, which his legal advisors later withdrew. On February 16, 2018, Mueller had thirteen Russian citizens charged with, among other things, influencing the US election campaign without establishing a connection to Trump. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster called the evidence of Russia's interference "now truly indisputable."

On April 11, 2018, the US Senate started the legislative process to make it more difficult for the president to fire the special counsel. In May 2018, it was revealed that an FBI informant secretly questioned three Trump campaign employees during the summer and fall of 2016, sparking Trump's ire ("worse than Watergate") and an investigation by Congressman Devin Nunes . After party leaders in Congress were informed of these measures, Republican Trey Gowdy called them appropriate; there is no evidence for Trump's accusation that his campaign was infiltrated. After Trump expressed doubts about the findings of his intelligence services at the Helsinki summit with Putin in July 2018, a growing number of publicists said they were not sure that Putin did not have something on Trump, according to a Quinnipiac poll also 51 percent of Americans suspected (but 70 percent of Republicans didn't believe). Republican Congressman Will Hurd wrote that the President had been manipulated by Putin.

Roger Stone , who had occasionally worked for Trump since the late 1970s, also worked for Trump during his election campaign and was therefore summoned as a witness in the course of the investigation in March 2018. After Stone gave false testimony under oath, but this breach of law was recognized, he was arrested in January 2019 but released on bail shortly thereafter until he was sentenced to prison in February 2020 but pardoned by Trump before he went into prison.

In March 2019, Special Counsel Mueller presented his final report. According to a four-page summary by US Attorney General William Barr, the report contained no evidence of collusion between Trump's camp and Russia during the 2016 election campaign. While Russian state actors attempted to influence the election campaign, Mueller did not conclude "that the Trump campaign or any associated person is cooperating or conspiring with the Russian government in these efforts." On the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, the report remained open and presented "evidence both ways". He does not conclude that Trump committed a crime, but does not exonerate him either. Trump took this conclusion as an opportunity to publicly speak of "complete exoneration", while legal analysts spoke of a misleading presentation of the investigation results. Mueller then complained to Barr about his "inaccurate" summary, which added to the "public confusion."

Payments for alleged affairs

On April 8, 2018, the offices of Trump's longtime attorney, Michael Cohen , were searched by the FBI. It was about the agreement with the porn actress Stormy Daniels , who was to be obliged by a payment of $ 130,000 from Cohen a few days before the 2016 presidential election not to publicize a previous alleged affair with Trump. Experts assume that documents related to the Russia investigation were also found. Trump denies having an affair with Stormy Daniels. On April 16, a federal judge denied Trump's request to see the material found in front of investigators . On July 20, 2018, Rudy Giuliani , now Trump's personal attorney, confirmed that Cohen had picked up a conversation with Trump shortly before the presidential election about a payment to model Karen McDougal that was not executed . McDougal claims to have had an affair with Trump for about a year, beginning in 2006, which Trump had previously denied. The FBI is investigating whether the payments constitute a violation of campaign finance rules. On August 21, 2018, Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to making the payment to both at Trump's instigation during the presidential campaign. Trump continues to deny this. If Cohen's version is correct, both could have been punished for illegal campaign financing. It was later revealed that investigators had granted American Media director David Pecker immunity in exchange for Pecker testifying that Trump knew about the payments. The payment to McDougal had been processed through American Media. AP reported that the National Enquirer exclusively acquired many damaging reports about Trump and then locked them away to keep them from becoming public. The Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, also received immunity for testifying about Cohen's payments.

allegations of sexual assault

After the video recording of the prelude to a 2005 television program became public in October 2016, in which Donald Trump boasted that he could do "anything" with women (see allegations of sexism ), in the weeks and months that followed, a total of 19 women declared that Trump had him sexually harassed her. He has denied these allegations. Former Apprentice participant Summer Zervos filed a lawsuit against him in January 2017. In autumn 2017, Trump's behavior was discussed intensively in the context of the MeToo debate. According to a December 2017 poll, 70 percent of Americans said the US Congress should investigate Trump because of this (38 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of Democrats). Republican Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said women should be heard; Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand called on Trump to resign over the multitude of credible allegations; otherwise there should be an investigation.

presidency

Donald Trump taking the oath of office, like his predecessor, with his hand on the Lincoln Bible (as well as his own Children's Bible )
Trump's inaugural address of January 20, 2017

Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, following a previous presidential transition that began after his election . The motto of his inaugural address was America First , and he vowed to make America strong, prosperous, proud and safe again and "start winning again - winning like never before". He will put US interests above all else, especially on jobs.

On his inauguration day, Trump filed the paperwork to participate in the upcoming 2020 election , ahead of any previous incumbent, and began campaign rallies in 2017.

Personnel and relationship to the elites

Trump's personnel policy was controversial from the start. Right-wing conservative Stephen Bannon was top adviser in Trump's cabinet until the summer of 2017 . Kellyanne Conway , who had run Trump's campaign, advised him primarily on public relations until August 2020 . Press secretary until July 2017 was Sean Spicer , who had been spokesman for the Republican National Committee since 2011 ; he was succeeded by Sarah Huckabee Sanders . Trump designated Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director on July 17, 2017 , but resigned ten days later. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was replaced by John F. Kelly in July 2017 (also at Scaramucci's instigation) .

Trump's daughter Ivanka became an unpaid "presidential assistant" at the end of March 2017 with her own office in the White House. Trump appointed her husband , Jared Kushner , along with his speechwriter Stephen Miller , to be senior advisors with a number of special assignments. Trump created advisory bodies such as the Technology Council , the Strategic and Policy Forum , and the American Manufacturing Council ; these were dissolved in the course of 2017.

Trump, James N. Mattis and Mike Pence , January 2017

The Trump cabinet included many political novices and career changers , including some business leaders and generals who collectively have personal wealth equivalent to a third of US households. Some used to work for the investment bank Goldman Sachs .

By the end of the first year in office, 34 percent of Trump's installed leaders had left their posts, more than in any previous first presidential term in 40 years. At the same time, hundreds of top positions in the federal administration remained vacant, while hundreds of officials left the EPA and the State Department . According to Chuck Todd , Trump increasingly relied on TV-savvy, confrontational and compliant attitudes when making personnel decisions.

In the summer of 2017, Trump's precarious relationship with many of the country's political decision-makers, both within the executive branch and vis-à-vis the legislature, was increasingly discussed. Journalists like David Frum described how the government is increasingly bypassing the president. The US Senate combined its tightening of sanctions on Russia (by a vote of 97-2) with a clause prohibiting the President from lifting or suspending those sanctions. On the recommendation of his team of advisers, Trump, against all custom, delegated the policy decision on US troop levels in Afghanistan, which is usually reserved for the President, to Mattis. This development was interpreted in such a way that experts tried to limit the influence of President Trump and his highly politicized confidants. The Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly opposed Trump's line on issues such as the non-agreed ban of transgender people from the military announced by Trump via Twitter , which according to law professor Jack Goldsmith is becoming more common and demonstrates the helplessness of the White House. Never before has a president been so frequently ignored or publicly contradicted by his own people.

According to Politico , before Trump's first major trip abroad at the end of May 2017, given the scandals and the chaotic unprofessionalism of the Trump administration, the view had prevailed among international diplomats that Trump was a "volatile clown" with a short attention span who needed to be contained. The planned NATO summit was downgraded to a meeting and the respective speaking time was limited to two to four minutes. Some international leaders made fun of Trump publicly. In August 2017, transcripts of Trump's inaugural phone calls with the Mexican President and the Australian Prime Minister were leaked, in which Trump urged Enrique Peña Nieto not to speak out publicly on the question of a wall between the two countries because it would damage Trump politically, and in which Malcolm Turnbull , despite repeated attempts, was unable to explain to Trump the bilateral regulations on the admission of illegal immigrants.

Trump fired his chief of staff, Reince Priebus , at the end of July 2017, which was interpreted as the collapse of the party-affiliated establishment wing in Trump's government and – following the failed abolition of Obamacare – as the president's declaration of war on his own party in Congress. As a result, the organization was criticized in the White House as chaotic and dysfunctional. According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal , Trump is promoting rival factions within his own team and is thus on the way to moving his presidency in the direction of that of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter (generally regarded as a failure). In July 2017, Goldsmith described Trump's White House as internally fragmented as never before.

In mid-August 2017, after a right- wing extremist march in Charlotteville , a young neo-Nazi deliberately drove his car into a group of counter-demonstrators. He killed a 32-year-old and injured 19 people. To the outrage of large parts of the public, Trump declared that both sides were responsible for the escalation and that there were good people on both sides. Trump responded to the criticism by increasingly using nativist , racially charged language, according to ABC News , describing things like the removal of monuments to Confederates - who defended slavery in the American Civil War - as an attack on US history and culture. In addition, after the suspected Islamist terrorist attack in Barcelona on August 17, 2017 , Trump repeated the long-debunked claim that US General John J. Pershing shot Muslims with bullets soaked in pig's blood in 1911, suggesting that this measure had Islamist terrorism behind it defeated for decades. Support for Trump among policymakers then dwindled even further; Republican Senator Bob Corker , who had been loyal until then, reproached Trump for not having shown the necessary stability or competence that a US president should have.

A vote initiated by Democrat Al Green to initiate impeachment proceedings for Trump inciting "hate and hostility" failed in the House of Representatives on December 6, 2017, by a vote of 58 to 364. After the Republicans in Congress in December passed a major tax reform with a broad reduction in nominal tax rates and thus implemented Trump's first major legislative project (which mainly benefited the super-rich), the congressmen of his party were satisfied with him.

Republicans, largely at the instigation of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , appointed more than 250 judges to federal courts during Trump's tenure . According to Politico , in 2017 Trump made many policy decisions that his party had long pursued, including a shift in foreign and environmental policy and the appointment of many conservatives to the judiciary. Ahead of the 2018 midterm election , Trump emerged as the undisputed leader of his party – with Republican popularity ratings hovering around 90 percent that only post-9/11 George W. Bush had before him , declarations of loyalty from most of his party's candidates, and the primary victory of almost all of them Trump-backed candidates. In contrast, the Washington Post observed that Trump often flouted the ceremonial traditions of his office and appeared like a pariah after not being invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle or the funerals of Barbara Bush and John McCain .

On July 7, 2019, the British newspaper Daily Mail published excerpts of emails from the British Ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch , which were not intended for the public. He has no hope that over time the Trump administration will become "much more normal, less dysfunctional, less unpredictable, less fractious, and less diplomatically clumsy and awkward." Referring to Trump, the ambassador advised that in order to get through to him, one had to present one's "arguments in a simple, even blunt manner." The media reports about "heavy factional fighting and chaos" in the White House "are mostly true" and with regard to the allegations of cooperation between Trump's campaign team and Russia, "the worst cannot be ruled out".

During his presidency (as of July 2020), Trump has given more ambassadorships to campaign donors than to trained diplomats on average than his predecessors.

Foreign and Security Policy

Trump identified American interests and national security as the main elements of his foreign policy . Defeating the Islamic State (IS) and other Islamist terrorist groups has top priority. On the day of his inauguration, Trump dismissed around 80 US ambassadors without notice . Trump declared “ America First ” as the guiding principle of his foreign policy: the interests of the American people and America’s security should take precedence over the needs of other nations. Trump called Israel a friend of the United States; As the only true democracy in the Middle East , Israel is a force for justice and peace there. Iran , on the other hand, has been treated too well by Obama and has become stronger in recent years. On December 6, 2017, Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; the US embassy in Israel will be relocated there in a process lasting several years. Some states, notably Palestine and Turkey , have criticized this partisanship with Israel.

On April 7, 2017, Trump, in a departure from his previous restraint in the Syrian civil war , launched 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria, apparently killing more than 10 people ( airstrike on al-Shaʿirat air base ). This intervention is in the tradition of targeted airstrikes by US presidents and has been endorsed by many Western leaders despite lack of approval from the US Congress.

Trump with Egyptian President Sisi and Saudi King Salman in Riyadh

Trump's first major trip abroad was to the Middle East and Europe at the end of May 2017. As the first US President since Jimmy Carter , Trump did not first visit a neighboring country. He signed arms deals with the Saudi government without addressing its human rights abuses and offered an enhanced security partnership to fight terrorism and Iran . In return, he would not give any advice on the internal constitution of the Muslim states in the region. His predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama had always called for democratization and constitutional reforms. At meetings with European allies, Trump showed his distance. At NATO headquarters in Brussels , he refrained from reiterating the NATO members' obligation to provide assistance and lectured the other heads of state about their payment obligations. At the G7 summit in Taormina , Trump blocked agreements on climate policy and refugee policy against all other heads of government.

Trump with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore

The conflict between the United States and the North Korean regime Kim Jong-un , which had been smoldering for years , initially escalated under Trump. After North Korea potentially achieved the capability to fire ICBMs at American territory, Trump threatened a first strike in August 2017 . In 2018 the conflict eased; Kim said he was willing to talk after speaking to Trump employees like Mike Pompeo . On April 30, 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in wished Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. On June 12, 2018, at their summit in Singapore , Trump and Kim agreed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula in exchange for promises of prosperity and an end to US military exercises with South Korea, without agreeing on specific steps or a timetable. The sanctions against North Korea remain in place. Another summit meeting in Hanoi in February 2019 was unsuccessful. On June 30, 2019, during a visit to South Korea , Trump spontaneously met Kim Jong-un at the inter- Korean border near Panmunjeom , becoming the first sitting US President to set foot on North Korean soil.

In December 2017, Trump agreed to a delivery of arms to Ukraine that included Javelin anti-tank missiles . Trump's predecessor Obama had rejected such a step.

On May 8, 2018, Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal . He wants to reinstate the sanctions against Iran.

On October 6, 2019, Trump telephoned Turkish President Erdoğan , against the advice of his own Defense and Foreign Ministry officials, to endorse Turkey's invasion of northern Syria .

On October 27, 2019, Trump announced the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi . He committed suicide during an operation by US special forces in Barisha , northwest Syria , to avoid arrest.

At the end of his term, Trump increased tensions with China. In July 2020, the State Department ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston closed , while the White House announced sanctions against some senior Chinese officials. In view of Chinese countermeasures under Xi Jinping , observers feared a deterioration in Sino-US relations .

In 2020, Carl Bernstein , who became famous as a Watergate investigator, spoke on behalf of CNN with dozens of current and former White House employees who were allowed to overhear Trump's phone calls or read them after the fact. Among them were past secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, and White House chiefs of staff . The conclusion: "In hundreds of telephone conversations with heads of government, the President was not in a position to competently maintain foreign policy relations." Trump was often poorly prepared and simply gave up important US positions. He lets himself be very impressed by 'strong men', even appears to be downright submissive. When he called Putin , he almost slavishly sought his approval. He is particularly boorish on the phone with female heads of state and government , especially with Chancellor Merkel .

Trump significantly increased the number of US drone strikes compared to his predecessor Obama. Overall, more drone strikes were carried out in Trump's first two years in office than in Obama's eight years combined. At the same time, Trump forbade the US military from publishing the number of victims of American air strikes - Obama had prescribed such publications at the time.

At the end of 2020, after Joe Biden's election victory, the US House of Representatives passed a package of laws for the defense budget. Trump vetoed it; this was rejected by the US Senate in January 2021 with the necessary two-thirds majority, which happened for the first time during Trump's presidency. With the $740 billion legislative package, the US Congress stopped Trump's planned massive withdrawal of US soldiers from Afghanistan, Germany and South Korea.

Shortly before the end of his term, Trump decided to classify the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a terrorist organization . The associated sanctions for doing business with the Houthi made it more difficult for foreign transfers and food deliveries to the Yemeni population, whose poverty and famine began at the latest with the military intervention in Yemen .

domestic policy

Bless you

With Tom Price , Trump appointed an opponent of President Obama's fundamental health care reform ( Obamacare ) as Secretary of Health . Republicans in both chambers of Congress spent most of 2017 working towards a repeal of the federal law. The very different legislative proposals, some of which were offensively supported by Trump, failed due to internal disagreements within the party. The reform, proposed primarily by Trump, would have removed health protections from 24 million Americans, particularly older citizens.

In 2018, Trump dissolved the anti-pandemic response team set up by his predecessor Obama and proposed a budget cut for the CDC . The dissolution of the crisis team and the prepared pandemic plans were later blamed for the poor US response to the COVID-19 pandemic .

Trump was alerted by the National Security Council (NSC) to the danger of a major pandemic in early January 2020 ; also in late January by his economic adviser Peter Navarro and by Health Secretary Alex Azar . But Trump remained almost inactive. In September, Trump admitted that he had deliberately downplayed the risk of corona in 2020. Tape recordings of Trump interviews prove this.

Justice, immigration and racism

Trump announced better law enforcement ( law and order ) and unveiled plans for a border wall with Mexico , a key campaign promise to stop illegal immigration. His freeze on grants to Sanctuary Cities was barred by a court; in the first year of the presidency, the number of illegal immigrants fell significantly. With Executive Order 13769 on January 27, 2017, Trump issued a 90-day entry ban for nationals of seven countries with a majority Muslim population, which several federal judges had suspended. The newly formulated and defused Executive Order 13780 issued on March 6, 2017 was also suspended by the court. The Supreme Court provisionally enforced parts of the entry ban in June and December 2017.

While trying to seal off the United States from asylum seekers, Trump also instrumentalized the refugee crisis in Germany from 2015 . In a tweet on June 18, 2018, he untruthfully claimed that crime in Germany had increased and that the population was turning against the government.

Hate crime increased sharply after Trump's election, having risen since the 2015 primary campaign began. Even in 2017, despite falling, levels remained above those seen prior to the 2016 election, which many observers have linked to Trump's chauvinistic and confrontational policies.

On January 11, 2018, at a meeting with Democrats and Republicans on immigration reform, Trump reportedly asked the question, "Why are people from shithole states still coming to us?", according to media reports. 54 African countries have requested an apology through their ambassadors to the United Nations in New York. Trump denied the statement, after which Democratic Senator Dick Durbin called the reports accurate.

In July 2019, Trump made disparaging remarks about the African-American majority city of Baltimore , part of the constituency of African-American Congressman and Trump critic Elijah Cummings . His constituency is "a disgusting, rat and rodent infested shithole," the "worst" and "most dangerous" place in the United States. The statement was criticized as racist by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , and Baltimore's African-American Democratic Mayor Jack Young called Trump's rhetoric "painful and dangerous" and "completely unacceptable."

From the summer of 2017 up to and including 2019, thousands of asylum-seeking families were separated from each other in reception camps as part of a zero-tolerance strategy, although President Trump announced the end of the zero-tolerance strategy in June 2018. From June 2018 to autumn 2019 / early 2020, around 1,100 families were separated from each other. In June 2019, John Sanders , who was responsible for the camps in the Trump administration, resigned. According to government figures, as of January 2020, 4,368 minors had been separated from their parents since the beginning of Trump's presidency. According to a statement from the ACLU, the parents of 545 migrant children who were separated from each other in 2017 as part of US immigration policy were no longer traceable as of October 2020.

In June 2020, after Trump repealed a rule created under the presidency of Barack Obama to protect trans people from discrimination, the US Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender was unlawful.

After a 17-year hiatus in federal executions , Attorney General William Barr ordered their resumption on July 25, 2019. Beginning in July 2020, ten people were carrying out the federal death penalty in 2020 – the highest number of federal executions per year since 1896.

Beginning of September 2020, i. H. Amid nationwide protests against racism (like the Black Lives Matter movement or anti-racism protests in the National Football League ), Trump ordered state agencies to stop employees attending anti-racism training because they were “un-American propaganda". Trump called measures against systemic racism divisive.

education

Trump spoke out in September 2020 to encourage "patriotic education." In doing so, he turns against an alleged indoctrination of students who should be ashamed of their "whiteness". By presidential decree, Trump formed a "Patriotic Education Board" called the 1776 Commission . This should encourage educators to teach about "the miracle of American history" and the love for America.

right to vote

At the end of March 2020, he commented on a reform draft by the Democrats that was rejected by the Republicans – which would make voter registration and postal voting easier: “They had some really crazy things in there. That was the scale of voting, if you ever agreed to that, no Republican in this country would ever win an election again.”

environment and energy

Trump occupied three key positions in his cabinet with opponents of active climate policy and representatives of the oil industry (see climate change denial ), namely Secretary of Energy Rick Perry , head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt (resigned July 5, 2018) and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson , who until then had been head of the mineral oil company ExxonMobil (dismissed on March 13, 2018).

In energy policy, Trump wants to make maximum use of resources and make the country independent of foreign oil. In 2017, Trump ordered the construction of several oil pipelines that had been suspended under Obama due to environmental concerns. On June 1, 2017, Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Agreement on climate protection , which Obama helped to adopt in 2015 and which almost all countries had signed. The global reaction was mostly very critical.

In December 2017, Trump per Presidential Proclamation reduced the size of Bears Ears National Monument from 1,351,849 acres to 201,876 acres (down 85 percent) and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from 1,880,461 acres to 1,003,863 acres (down 47 percent ). ).

In mid-October 2018, after Hurricane Michael , he retracted his claim that climate change was a hoax . Instead, he asserted that climate change is cyclical and not man -made .

business

Trump's economic policies are seen as deregulating , isolationist and protectionist . New jobs and continued economic growth are to be created through a tax reform that lowers rates, especially for large companies, and was passed by Congress in mid-December 2017.

Trump announced during the election campaign that he would limit free trade and oblige American companies to produce domestically. Peter Navarro , whom Trump appointed director of the National Trade Council in the White House, opposed, among other things, Chinese trade policy and alleged currency manipulations as well as the German trade surplus . Trump repeatedly identified Germany as the cause of the US trade deficit and threatened, among other things, tariffs against German car manufacturers. As announced during the election campaign, the US withdrew from the Trans -Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement and announced renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the US current account deficit widened to its highest level in nine years. In the first quarter of 2018, it rose to US$124.1 billion (+6.9 year-on-year) due to higher imports. The deficit corresponded to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product.

The Washington Post ranked Trump's claim that the US "loses" hundreds of billions of dollars a year on its trade deficit as one of his biggest, most repeated lies. In fact, states do not lose money through current account deficits, they merely mean that citizens of one state have a greater interest in the goods of the other state than vice versa.

Financial and ethical aspects

Before taking office, Trump had announced that he would convert his company into a trust company to be run by his sons Don and Eric. However, this was not done consistently, and it turned out that he still has insight into the annual reports and can access the profits at any time. The announcement that the Trump Organization would no longer conduct foreign business during his term in office was also ignored. This raised concerns about political, national, and economic conflicts of interest , which led to several lawsuits against Trump (see Donald Trump's Presidency#Allegations of Lack of Corporate Separation ). An example of a conflict of interest is his tax reform, which he himself said would cost him a lot of money personally, while experts estimate it will save him millions.

Contrary to custom and his campaign promises, Trump did not publish his income tax return even after he took office . The costs of Trump's cabinet members due to expensive flights and other expenses also caused criticism. Since the start of his presidency, Trump has spent almost a third of his days on his private estate. On the one hand, Trump incurs high transport and personal security costs for the Secret Service , and on the other hand, his hotel business earns from those costs, since the Secret Service bodyguards also have to stay in the same hotels. The cost of the Trumps to taxpayers has often been broken down and criticized.

On the weekends, he often stays at his private estate Mar-a-Lago in Florida, instead of, as is usual for US Presidents, at Camp David , which is provided and maintained for this purpose . He practiced his hobby golf much more often than his predecessor Obama, although he had criticized him for it.

Doubts about eligibility

Trump's former ghostwriter , Tony Schwartz , said in mid-2015 that he had an "impressive level of surface knowledge and blatant ignorance," was "so insecure, so easily provoked," and had "more sociopathic tendencies" than any other political candidate he could remember. At the end of 2015, internal party presidential rival Jeb Bush predicted that Trump would wreak havoc as US President. In 2016, former security agency chiefs Michael Morell and Michael V. Hayden , referring to Trump's business ties and comments on Russia and Putin, said that Putin considered the ignorant Trump a useful idiot . Shortly before Trump's inauguration, investor George Soros warned of Trump as a "fake and impostor and wannabe dictator". Republican Senator John McCain said in February 2017 that he was concerned about Trump's contradictory statements and wondered if Trump understood some political issues. Left Senator Bernie Sanders saw Trump working toward authoritarian government in America in mid-March 2017; he is trying to abolish the separation of powers. His attacks on the media, his disrespect for judges and his repeated claims that five million people voted illegally in the presidential election are lies designed to undermine the foundations of American democracy.

Several psychiatrists as of 2015 have expressed the view that Trump has narcissistic personality disorder or the dark triad , with some calling him incapacitated because of his emotional instability. Some doctors suspect the president has a neurodegenerative disease , partly because of a deterioration in his ability to express himself or herself. In December 2017, the neurologist Ford Vox called for a neurological examination of Trump because of the speech problems, the impulsive, unrestrained appearance and the lack of concentration and attention.

It is controversial whether such remote diagnoses are permissible and allow reliable statements. The “ Goldwater Rule ,” adopted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1973 , prohibits psychiatrists from making a diagnosis without an examination. Allen Frances , one of the authors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , thought it possible that Trump was an extreme narcissist ; but since he is neither suffering from it nor disabled by it, he is by definition not mentally ill .

Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz proposed legislation requiring U.S. presidents to undergo mental health exams, saying his concern is not about Trump but about the president's discretionary powers over the use of nuclear weapons . Democratic Congressional Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recommended a medical evaluation of Trump's mental health in February 2017, her party colleague Zoe Lofgren proposed a congressional resolution to that end in August 2017; it is about the 25th amendment to the United States Constitution , which allows Congress to remove an incapacitated President. In October 2017, the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was published , in which 27 psychiatric experts rated Trump as dangerous; more than 60,000 people working in this field have signed a petition to remove Trump under Article 25. When the investigative bestseller Fire and Fury: In the White House by Donald Trump , published in January 2018, confirmed these impressions with statements from anonymous White House employees, Trump commented on his psyche and described himself in a tweet as a “very stable genius “ (very stable genius).

In September 2018, The New York Times published an anonymous essay , I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration , which reported that several government officials failed to follow instructions from the President to avert harm to the nation. The essay describes Trump's style of government as impulsive, hostile, narrow-minded and ineffective. According to the essay, there are bright spots in government work. But these would come about despite Trump. According to the essay, in the early days of the presidency, cabinet members discussed using the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution to remove Trump from power. In order to draw attention to the poor conduct of the President's office, a mass resignation was also considered. In November 2019, A Warning , an anonymous book, was published, the content of which ties in with the anonymous essay and claims to come from the same author. In October 2020, Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff of Homeland Security under Donald Trump, came out as the author of the two writings.

In the book The Room Where It Happened , published in June 2020, John R. Bolton tells about his experiences as Trump's national security adviser and characterizes him as incompetent and corrupt.

In the July 2020 book Too Much and Never Enough , Donald Trump's niece Mary L. Trump also judged her uncle as unfit for the presidency.

Michael Cohen , Trump's former attorney, published Disloyal in September 2020, a book about his time as President Trump's attorney, in which he gets even with the latter.

After the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington DC , Chief of Staff Mark Milley took secret precautions to ensure that a possible Trump order to use nuclear weapons would strictly follow military command processes and procedures (far from the fact that authority over the use of nuclear weapons is solely the responsibility of the National Command Authority - composed primarily of the President and the Secretary of Defense). In a phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 8, 2021, Milley agreed with Pelosi's testimony that Trump was insane. After the call, Pelosi released a press release citing Milley's call as preventing an "unstable president" from "launching military strikes" or ordering a " nuclear attack ."

impeachment proceedings

1. Trial on charges of abuse of power

In September 2019, a whistleblower revealed that in July 2019 President Trump had telephoned the Ukrainian President Selenskyj , who had just taken office, to have Joe Biden and his son Hunter investigated. Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of directors of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings in 2014 after the coup in Kiev . In 2018, the right-wing conservative US journalist Peter Schweizer claimed that Hunter Biden was engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine. His father, Joe Biden, was the only remaining Democratic nominee for the November 3, 2020 presidential election following the retirement of Bernie Sanders . Trump has been accused of wanting to eliminate a political competitor with foreign aid. On September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially opened a House investigation into an official impeachment inquiry into Trump for breach of oath of office and endangering national security. The main allegations were that Trump withheld almost $400 million in military aid that had already been promised in order to put pressure on Zelenskyy and that he had obstructed the US House of Representatives in clarifying the matter.

On December 18, 2019, the Democratic-majority House of Representatives officially began impeachment proceedings against Trump, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, by passing the two "articles of impeachment" by a majority and broadly along party lines that served as the basis for the indictment of the serving Presidents before the US Senate. Pelosi had these indictments brought to the Senate on January 15, 2020. After presenting the prosecution and defense, and refusing to hear new witnesses and admit evidence, the vote on impeachment as such has been set for Wednesday, February 5, 2020. Trump was acquitted on the two counts: on the first count of abuse of office, 48 out of 100 senators voted in favor of his conviction, on the second count of obstruction of Congress 47 out of 100. The votes of 67 senators were needed for a conviction. The acquittal was expected due to the Republican majority. Mitt Romney was the only voice from within his own ranks to oppose the President on the first count. Shortly thereafter, Trump fired key witnesses Gordon Sondland and Alexander Vindman , who had heavily incriminated him.

2. Trial on the charge of incitement to riot

Trump's role in the demonstrations before and his behavior during and after the attack on a supporter demonstration that led to the temporary suspension of congressional deliberations and the occupation of the Capitol has been questioned by members of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives and also by individual Republicans demanded the immediate resignation of Trump. Alternatively - for the first time in the history of the USA - dismissal due to incapacity by cabinet decision or a second impeachment procedure against him shortly before the end of his term of office were considered. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shared, among other things: said she had contacted the senior US military commander to ensure Trump could not launch combat operations or order a nuclear strike for the remainder of his presidency . On January 13, 2021, after Vice President Mike Pence rejected a request to impeach Trump through the application of the 25th Amendment based on a Cabinet decision on grounds of incapacity, the second impeachment trial for Trump was initiated by a majority vote in the House of Representatives by a majority of 232 votes in favour, 197 against ( ten members of the Republican Party also supported this). Pelosi said Trump was a clear and ongoing threat to the nation. "The President of the United States instigated this riot, this armed rebellion against our country." Trump was not removed from office.

civil society protests

Tax March, 15 April 2017

Protests against Donald Trump have been organized since the announcement of his presidential candidacy in June 2015. After his election victory at the end of 2016, these increased. Some large demonstrations attracted the attention of the world public. For the Women's March on Washington on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump's inauguration, around half a million people came to Washington, DC for what was by far the largest protest demonstration in the history of North America , in the United States a total of around four to five million people together. For the Science March on Earth Day 2017, around 40,000 people turned up in the US capital on April 22, and around 250,000 people in around 600 cities worldwide. About 15,000 gathered in Washington for the Climate March on the 100th day of the presidency on April 30, 2017; demonstrations were held in over 300 other US cities.

In the summer of 2017, some black American football teams — whose followings overlap heavily with Trump's — began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before games to protest discrimination and police violence , prompting Trump to tweet in September 2017 that the Calling on team leaders to take action and calling Colin Kaepernick a son of a bitch. As a result, more and more players, coaches and owners of National Football League teams chose to kneel or remain in the dressing room during the anthem in solidarity against Trump. Basketball stars like LeBron James also showed solidarity, musicians like Stevie Wonder and Pharrell Williams knelt before performances. Various media have described this conflict as a new culture war, with which Trump is trying to distract himself from his political problems.

There were also situational influences, especially on individual members of Congress, for example at public meetings on health policy, or at airports after Trump's entry restrictions for people from predominantly Muslim countries. Some of these protests brought concrete success in influencing political and personnel decisions. Various groups are working to expand the protests into an organized resistance movement. In October 2017, resistance to Trump became institutionalized and created its own infrastructure outside of established parties, which is maintained by major political donors and could shape the future direction of left-wing politics in the United States and the Democratic Party.

When the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 triggered protests against police violence across the country , which were largely supported by the Black Lives Matter movement , Trump described this movement as anarchistic and unpatriotic. He dispatched federal Homeland Security troops to cities hit hard by the protests, although some opposed the move. In late July 2020, the New York Times ' chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, discussed parallels between Trump's rhetoric and George Wallace 's law-and-order campaign in the 1968 presidential election .

nomination of constitutional judges

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020, Donald Trump has the opportunity, after Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh , to nominate a conservative constitutional judge for the Supreme Court for the third time in just four years ; compared to Barack Obama , who was only able to appoint two new constitutional judges in eight years. The nomination of a constitutional judge ahead of the 2020 presidential election in November was dismissed by Democrats, citing the same situation prior to the 2017 presidential election, in which Barack Obama's nomination of a new constitutional judge was denied by the Republican-dominated Senate, citing the upcoming US election. sharply criticized. Unlike before the 2017 presidential election, however, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a few hours after Ginsburg's death that a new constitutional judge would be confirmed well ahead of the election.

Trump's nomination of conservative constitutional judges shifts the voting ratio in the Supreme Court 6:3 in the direction of conservative judges; For many years before Trump, conservative and liberal judges had a 4-4 vote, and the presiding judge's alternating votes made the decisive difference. Since constitutional judges are appointed for life, observers fear there will be a clear shift towards more conservative judgments by the Supreme Court in the years and decades to come.

Critics fear that a conservative shift in the balance of votes by Trump will be done with political calculation, since Trump could not recognize a possible election defeat in November 2020 and would have to decide after discussions about the election results of the Supreme Court.

COVID-19 infection

On the morning of October 2, 2020, Trump announced on Twitter that he and his wife had tested positive for the pathogen SARS-CoV-2 . He was at Walter Reed Military Hospital October 3-5 for treatment. Three weeks after the end of his tenure, it was revealed that his blood oxygen levels were intermittently very low.

Presidential candidacy 2020

For Donald Trump's campaign (his obstruction of preparing the US Postal Service for postal voting, his SARS-CoV-2 infection and televised duels with Joe Biden ), see Donald Trump's presidency and presidential election on November 3, 2020 .

After the presidency

Donald Trump left the White House on January 20 and did not attend Joe Biden 's inauguration. Normally, every outgoing president attends the inauguration of his successor, but on the morning of January 20, Trump held a farewell for himself and flew to Mar-a-Lago .

big lie

Still not accepting his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump wrote in a statement on his website (which he uses because his social media accounts are blocked) that the 2020 presidential election should henceforth be called THE BIG LIE lie) to be known. According to a poll by CNN at the end of April 2021, 70% of the Republicans polled assume a stolen election victory. Trump held a major rally again for the first time on June 26, 2021. He repeated his allegations of voter fraud and accused his successor Joe Biden of “destroying our nation before our eyes”. Trump (as of late 2021) is still acting like a campaigner; its core message remains the story of the "big lie".

With the Republicans

Donald Trump is still very influential in the Republican Party. This is shown, for example, when he demanded that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell filibuster a committee of inquiry into the 2021 storming of the Capitol in Washington , which he did, or when he demanded that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy : to throw his critic Liz Cheney , who had often spoken out against the Big Lie , from the parliamentary group leadership of the Republican faction in the House of Representatives and to replace it with Elise Stefanik , who, on the other hand, very often spoke of voter fraud. This also happened.

Fundraiser for TRUTH Social

In 2021, Trump created Trump Media & Technology Group , which is a type of Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). Trump Media & Technology Group raised $293 million in its IPO . According to its own statement, the group is raising capital on the stock market to set up TRUTH Social (a social network planned by Trump ).

Booster vaccination against COVID-19

In December 2021, the highly contagious omicron variant became the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United States . Trump had a booster shot at the end of 2021 and publicly promoted it; Vaccination opponents and right-wing conspiracy theorists insulted him.

reception

relationship with the media

Numerous election researchers and news media were surprised by Donald Trump's election victory. Before the election, much of the more left-wing media reported primarily critically about Trump, while Clinton was generally considered to have a higher chance of winning. Trump was sometimes considered unelectable because of his statements, which were widely described as racist and sexist. Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis called Trump "a product of the US media" and blamed them for his success for their extensive coverage of Trump. Many journalists "lost sight of the citizens" and created a rift. In relation to Trump's relationship with Fox News Channel , media scientist Bernhard Pörksen refers to long-term research by The New Yorker and the New York Times , according to which both sides pass information to each other about alleged scandals and alleged conspiracies, among other things for the purpose of defaming opponents. Trump commented on individual broadcasts in real time on Twitter; his more than 87 million followers acted as a ratings driver for Fox News.

The historian and journalist Tim Stanley sees Trump's election success primarily as a result of his greater presence in social media such as Facebook, Instagram and above all Twitter than Clinton, especially since the majority of citizens mainly get their information from them. He used this to manipulate television coverage of him in the mainstream media he despised. Joe McCarthy 's lawyer and legal advisor , Roy Cohn , whom he met in 1973, was instrumental in his offensive behavior against critical press. It was through him that Trump met Roger Stone in 1979 , who in turn has worked for Trump occasionally, including as a lobbyist, later became an adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, and was pardoned by President Trump after being sentenced to 40 months in prison because, among other things, he gave false testimony as a witness in the course of the FBI's special investigation into Trump's election campaign .

Many commentators worry about freedom of speech and the press during Trump's presidency; Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss said in November 2016 that Trump had "unleashed a hatred that is now partially showing on the streets, and that is extremely dangerous." Among other things, Trump called for the principle of source protection in journalism to be abolished. He often described journalists and certain media as "corrupt" or "mendacious"; they are the “real opposition” and “enemies” of his government and the people (“enemy of the people”). Trump behaved abusively at press conferences on several occasions and had some critical media excluded. He personally attacked some journalists who had reported critically or asked questions, such as Megyn Kelly (see Allegations of sexism ) and Serge F. Kovaleski , in the presidential campaign, whose physical disability Trump had made fun of by aping. In late June 2017, Trump vulgarly tweeted against Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough for criticizing Trump on their MSNBC program Morning Joe . They said one of Trump's close advisors threatened them with a damaging newspaper article if they didn't apologize to Trump. Trump denied that. Trump also asked federal agencies to unsubscribe from the New York Times and Washington Post . Some see Trump's polarizing policies as an opportunity to strengthen democracy. From fall 2016 to February 2017 , the New York Times gained over 275,000 subscribers ; the Washington Post and the New Yorker also gained subscribers and hired staff for research , among other things .

A tweet just after midnight on May 31, 2017 about the "constant negative press covfefe" drew worldwide attention and ridicule and was deleted six hours later; presumably the string of characters "covfefe", which became an internet phenomenon , is a misspelling for "coverage" ("constant negative press coverage"). Some media outlets have reported that Trump often unadvisedly tweets while watching TV alone at night, undermining White House language rules, which can also have legal ramifications as Trump's tweets are unfiltered on topics under investigation. In a June 6, 2017 tweet, Trump accused the mainstream media of trying to block his use of social media because they "hate" that he was delivering "the sincere and unfiltered message." Trump released a video in July 2017 in which he repeatedly slapped a man in the face overlaid by a CNN logo, originally from a 2007 Trump wrestling storyline . CNN called this an incitement to violence. Republican Senator Ben Sasse then warned Trump not to weaponize distrust, which would endanger constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression . In late September 2017, in a Quinnipiac poll, 69% to 29% of Americans believed Trump should stop tweeting.

A Harvard Kennedy School study found that in the first 100 days , Trump had been the subject of 41 percent of all news reports on national television , three times more than any previous president, of which 80 percent were negative (52 percent on conservative news network Fox News, 93 percent for CNN and NBC and 98 percent for ARD , which, like many other foreign media, frequently raised the question of Trump's fitness for office ). In 2017, Trump extremely dominated the more than 2.8 billion US political tweets; it was the number one topic on all but 17 days of the year, plus every week for every user group (conservative and left-wing activists and Washington elites). Trump appeared in over 901 million tweets in 2017, more than twice as many as in 2016 and ten times as many as Obama in his last year in office. In December 2017, journalist David Frum pointed out that the conservative mainstream had come to terms with Trump. For example, of the 21 National Review conservative commentators who called for Never Trump (never Trump) in early 2016 , only six publicly held that position (including Jennifer Rubin , William Kristol , and John Podhoretz ), while almost as many publicly supported Trump had changed. The initially skeptical editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is also increasingly positive. According to a February 2018 poll, 54 percent of Americans (84 percent Democrats, about 20 percent Republicans) said they thought the mainstream media treated Trump fairly, while 59 percent thought Trump's handling of the media was unfair.

Enraged that Twitter was fact -checking his tweeted claims of May 26, 2020 , Trump issued an executive order ending protections for social networks like Twitter and Facebook from criminal prosecution and the networks' power to moderate content posted by users trimming. A little later, Twitter labeled a tweet by Donald Trump related to the state of emergency in Minneapolis as glorifying violence.

After Trump's former favorite broadcaster, Fox News, fell out of favor with Trump during the 2020 US presidential election for broadcasting the election results without acknowledging Trump's allegations of election fraud, Trump turned his back on him and has since favored One America News networks .

After the House of Representatives passed a defense budget bill in late 2020, Trump vetoed it. This veto was rejected by the US Senate in January 2021 with the necessary two-thirds majority. This was the first time a decision was taken against Trump's veto. One of the things Trump criticized about the legislative package, which also contains laws outside of defense policy, is that this legislative package does not abolish or change the regulation known as “Section 230”. On the one hand, this provision provides that online platforms can take action against user contributions and, on the other hand, that online platforms cannot be held liable for user contributions.

After the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 , Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) disabled Trump's access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts . Originally intended for 24 hours, Meta Platforms extended the account freeze, announcing it would remain in place until Joe Biden 's inauguration . On January 8, 2021, Twitter announced that Trump's Twitter account (@realdonaldtrump) was permanently suspended due to the risk of further inciting violence.

Two tweets from January 8th, which were promptly deleted by Twitter

Followers as part of a “silent majority”

Publicist Ward Baker said in December 2015 that Trump was "so popular because voters see him as authentic, independent, direct and strong - and because they believe that he cannot be bought by interest groups". According to political advisor Frank Luntz , Trump's sympathizers are characterized not by their loyalty to conservative principles, but above all by their anger at the current state of US politics. Trump appeals to people with a wide range of values ​​and from all social classes because he “speaks their language” and as an “anti-politician” attacks the unpopular political establishment. Like Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, he positioned himself as a candidate for a “silent majority”.

According to poll and poll data from February 2016, about a third of Trump's supporters overcame previous divisions in the Republican electorate during the party primary and were united in high coherence by "religious, social and racial intolerance".

As the Washington Post analyzed, Trump has been courting a right-wing political segment for years, which has now solidified into a counter-establishment (“fringe establishment”) and has gained a large media presence as a counter-public; Trump left scorched earth with the established.

A poll conducted by the think tank Chicago Council after the first six months of Trump's presidency found that the views of his core constituency had not changed, while the electorate at large grew unpopular with America First policies, particularly foreign trade protectionism and anti-immigrant policies was, disproportionately among Republican supporters overall.

language and style

Trump's style and language are considered extraordinary and have been analyzed many times. Performative stagings, often of a melodramatic nature, were in the foreground for the entertainment-experienced Trump, even before political content - for example in the frequent, choreographed photos of the signing of decrees in the Oval Office . Journalist Michael D'Antonio said Trump was "so busy with his performance that nothing he says about himself can be called sincere." Trump's way of shaking hands with international politicians - often extraordinarily long and intense, while he did not shake hands with Angela Merkel in the Oval Office - has been interpreted as a gesture of dominance.

sentence structure and vocabulary

Trump's speeches use short, clearly structured sentences with few syllables, often with the most important ones at the end, and often imperatives - as in his slogan " Make America Great Again ". According to indices , the grammar and vocabulary of his campaign speeches were understandable even to eleven-year-olds, while the language of many political competitors and former presidents was and is significantly more complex. In the 1980s and 1990s, Trump used much more complex sentence structures and vocabulary. According to a computer- linguistic study , his statements in 2015/16 were more strongly characterized by a feminine language register (auxiliary verbs, ego reference, emotional, dynamic address) than those of all candidates in presidential campaigns since 2004, including those of his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Confrontational and "apolitical" style

Trump's style is considered confrontational. Since February 2017, The New York Times has compiled a continuously updated list of over 500 people, places and objects that Trump has insulted or insulted on Twitter since June 2015. Markus Feldenkirchen judged in 2015 that Trump does almost everything differently from conventional politicians; he mercilessly names everything that is rotten in the US political system . During the election campaign, Trump made no effort to limit or weaken the vote, even towards certain groups of voters. He often used provocative statements that violated taboos, hinted at conspiracy theories and outsider theses and thus repeatedly attracted attention. In his rhetoric of "strong" and "weak" he made political opponents contemptible, for example through allusions to family members and nicknames such as "Crooked Hillary " (crook Hillary) or "little Marco "; He described the Vietnam veteran John McCain as not a real hero because he had allowed himself to be captured. In doing so, he creates a feeling of personal closeness among the followers in a fighting community against the established. As with Silvio Berlusconi , Trump would also have the boastful myth of self-made rise to billionaire status, the macho virility he flaunted and his virtuoso mastery of the media. Confronted with critical questions, Trump uses his comedic talent and sticks to his simple language – unlike the usual politicians who evade abstraction – with which he signals his distance from the political business. When asked about content and positions, he often resorts to anecdotes or people from his personal environment instead of committing himself to details.

rhetoric

The US rhetoric professor Jennifer Mercieca ( Texas A&M University ) has been studying Trump's rhetoric and language use since 2015. Trump specifically uses linguistic patterns that ancient speakers already knew and used. He exaggerates and polarizes ; he insults political opponents ( ad hominem ), threatens ( argumentum ad baculum ) and depersonalizes them. He often uses paralipses ( e.g. I'm not saying... I'm just saying... ) and makes accusations in such a way that he cannot be held responsible ( Whataboutism ).

Truth of Trump's statements - quotes

Trump is credited with a post - truth politics style : According to studies by websites such as Politifact , the proportion of his political statements that are objectively false was around 70% in autumn 2017 (Obama: 26%); The New York Times and Washington Post each maintain databases of false statements by Trump in office, which exceeded 1000 in the summer of 2017. By the November 2018 midterm election , there had been over 6,400 false statements, and Trump's frequency has increased over time, with over 1,400 in the seven weeks leading up to the election. Overall, the Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year tenure, about half of them in his last year in office. While he made about six false or misleading claims a day during his first year as president, he made 16 by his second year, 22 by his third, and 39 by his senior year.

In December 2018, the Washington Post 's fact-checking division introduced a new category, the bottomless Pinocchio , for statements that were proven untrue and that a politician nevertheless repeated at least twenty times. Until then, Trump was the only politician ever to meet these criteria, while most other politicians did not repeat proven lies. As of December 2018, Trump had received a bottomless Pinocchio rating on fourteen occasions, including falsely claiming his tax cut was the largest in history, repeated 123 times, or claiming that construction of the border wall to Mexico had already begun, repeated 86 times . The Süddeutsche Zeitung raised the question of whether the fact-checking instrument makes any sense at all, given that these repeated lies did not harm Trump's supporters.

In 2016, Harry G. Frankfurt described Trump as a bullshitter who, unlike a liar, no longer had any relationship to truth and reality, but simply made any claims in the world.

In a 2017 study of lying, social scientist Bella DePaulo said Trump not only lies more often than anyone else studied, but the ratio of his lies to make himself look better to “friendly” little lies – typically two to one – is higher than Trump’s six to one. In addition, the proportion of his lies that hurt others is unusually high at 50% (usual: 1 to 2%). In two fall 2017 polls, less than 40% of Americans polled said they believed Trump's statements.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake said in a speech before the US Senate on January 17, 2018: “In 2017, truth—objective, empirical, demonstrable truth—was more abused and compromised than at any time in our country's history , led by the most powerful figure in our government". The constant repetition of untruths undermines trust in important institutions and causes the public to stop believing them. This has destructive effects on democracy.

In 2019, political scientists Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead cited Trump as an example of “new conspiracism,” a new form of conspiracy belief. Unlike classic conspiracy theories, this completely dispenses with evidence and circumstantial evidence and is based solely on insinuating questions and mere assertions that are often repeated. Typically, Trump prefaces such claims with the phrase that a lot of people would say that. In the 2016 primary campaign, for example, he spread the suspicion that the father of his competitor Ted Cruz had had contact with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald : Even if that wasn't entirely true, there was still something to it. Since taking office, Trump has spread such conspiracy claims about fake news, allegedly rigged elections or a coup by the Justice Department almost every day .

In a speech to the nation on US Independence Day in July 2019, Trump claimed that Americans took airports in 1775, during the American Revolutionary War . In September 2019, in the wake of Hurricane Dorian , Trump presented a retrospectively manipulated National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map to support his claim that the state of Alabama could be at risk from the hurricane. In March 2020, Trump claimed Seoul had a population of 38 million.

In a May 26, 2020 tweet, Trump attempted to explain why voting by mail in California for the 2020 US presidential election would result in voter fraud . Twitter flagged this tweet as misleading after a fact check . (See: Vote-by-mail controversy – obstruction of the US Federal Mail )

strategies and calculations

In 2017, the FAZ described empty threats and empty promises as hallmarks of his crisis management . Trump's conduct of the negotiations has been compared to that of a hostage -taker : Trump threatens to end certain programs in order to persuade the other side to make concessions. He negotiates in a distributive manner , i.e. under a zero -sum assumption he is concerned with fully asserting himself (win-lose situation) - while politics is usually based on integrative negotiations, in which all sides agree on a complex balance of interests ( win-win situation ). While distributive negotiation relies on bluffing , threats and lies, the integrative approach is based on building trust, understanding the other party and knowing the facts. According to journalist Josh Marshall, Trump is only used to a particularly extreme form of distributive negotiation, which is unsuitable for permanent arrangements. Trump's behavior has been interpreted as a strategy to keep his opponents in the dark and to keep changing not only the positions but also the location of the conflict ("constantly shifting battlefield"). In his behavior, Trump also acts consistently in accordance with his two main mottos: "Always get even" ("Always take revenge") and "Hit back harder than you were hit" ("Hit back harder than you were hit"). . In January 2018, Senator Bob Corker , who was critical of Trump, praised him for this unpredictability, as it puts the United States in a good international negotiating position. Trump's biographer Timothy L. O'Brien, on the other hand, is of the opinion that Trump's motivation for action is always either self-preservation or self-aggrandizement: he is not capable of strategic thinking. Some commentators see the danger of overanalyzing Trump's behavior. In 2017, Die Zeit described a “ hermeneutic distress” on the part of the commentators because of Trump’s “constantly outdoing performance”, which cannot be dealt with using the usual categories of interpretation: Trump had deprived the citizens of the luxury of a stable democracy, not having to constantly deal with politics, and therefore cause stress. Contrary to the thesis that Trump is incapable of strategic action, this circumstance can be interpreted as the implementation of the chaos strategy that was already successful in ancient Greece . In doing so, he relies on the inability of the media to keep up with his political faux pas and personal scandals, so that he remains able to act unhindered by public resistance, as the public is already completely preoccupied with dealing with and analyzing the next crisis he has triggered is. By varying the frequency with which he becomes the focus of public interest and the amount of coverage needed to capture the situation, he maintains a constant state of emergency, a background noise in which the truly controversial decisions drown.

Placement in American political history

Torben Lütjen sees Trump's presidency as a result of increasing polarization between Democrats and Republicans, which began when the Democrats lost the conservative southern states ( Solid South ) to the radical libertarian Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election because of their rapprochement with the civil rights movement . In doing so, they won over the liberal Republican strongholds in the Northeast, reducing regional tensions within the parties while widening differences between them. In the 1968 presidential election , Richard Nixon succeeded in splitting the white working class, which had traditionally been democratic up to that point, and in pulling the majority into the conservative camp. His right-wing populism replaced socio -economic lines of conflict with socio-cultural ones and was already backing the same opponents as Trump – with anti-intellectualism, the media and a liberal elite as enemy images.

Some see Trump and Sanders' success as part of an anti-establishment movement as the end of what is believed to be the fifth or sixth of its kind in United States history. Trump is seen as the culmination of a Republican process that uses anger and extremism to mobilize voters without offering a robust vision of the future, with actors like Fox News and the Tea Party movement . According to Robert Kagan , during Obama's presidency, Republican supporters were encouraged to view the state and its institutions as something to be overcome, which explains the underdog Trump's success.

Historian Joseph J. Ellis interprets Trump's success as a political backlash of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants typical of American history , in this case to the first African-American president, as had the emergence of the Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klans in response to Reconstruction , and the success of Nixon's and later Reagan's Law and Order in response to the civil rights movement.

Thomas Assheuer interpreted Trump in 2020 as a symptom of an unrecognized crisis . Trump is a product of his age. The global financial crisis since 2007, "when millions of citizens lost their old-age security, their jobs and even their homes, while those responsible got off with impunity and the rich and super-rich got a black eye", caused a collective insecurity; this was thoroughly exploited by Trump to sow and stir up hatred and division.

International classification

Trump's success has been linked to right-wing populist parties in Europe. The New York Times , for example, saw Trump's campaign as following in the footsteps of pro-worker parties like Britain's UKIP , which saw immigration as a threat to Christian identity and economic integrity. Parts of the population see themselves as being left behind in cultural change and because of job migration in the globalized economy as the losers of modernization , whereas these movements propagated “ welfare chauvinism ”, i.e. the defense of the welfare state only for the locals. After Trump's election victory, fears arose that he could form a "nationalist international" with authoritarian and right-wing movements around the world - such as Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France and Vladimir Putin in Russia - and thus oppose the hitherto stable liberal one order of the western states. In the spring of 2017, however, this became less likely due to Trump's increasingly interventionist and anti-Russian foreign and security policy.

In art and pop culture

Trump made a brief cameo appearance in the 1992 film Kevin: Alone in New York . This was his condition for filming being allowed to take place in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel , which he owned at the time.

The animated series The Simpsons developed the idea that Lisa Simpson would become the first US President to succeed Donald Trump in 2030 in the episode Bart's Future Sight (season 11), which aired in 2000 . In 2015, Trump's speech declaring the presidential candidacy was also picked up in the series.

After his successful debut as an entertainer with The Apprentice , the 2005 TV movie Trump Unauthorized ( German: Donald Trump's big show ) aired with Louis Ferreira in the leading role, which is based on books by his biographer Gwenda Blair .

On March 30, 2016, rappers YG and Nipsey Hussle released the protest song FDT (Fuck Donald Trump) , which sparked a Secret Service investigation due to its offensive lyrics . In October 2016, a music project called 30 Days, 30 Songs , started by Dave Eggers , started with the goal of releasing one song a day for a "Trump-free America" ​​until the day of the presidential election. With Trump's election, the project was expanded under the motto 1,000 Days, 1,000 Songs for the duration of his tenure. A similar playlist was released by independent label Secretly Canadian called Our First 100 Days .

In October 2016, a fortune -telling machine with a Trump doll as a prophet appeared in New York City , "The All Seeing Trump" ( German "Der allsehende Trump " ("The All-Seeing Trump" )). It was a moving art installation . The all-seeing Trump had anti-immigrant stances and a bleak outlook for the future. If you pressed a button, he would make dire predictions and spit out a misfortune card .  

At the Golden Globe Awards in mid-January 2017, actress Meryl Streep gave a statement on Donald Trump instead of an acceptance speech: "Disrespect invites disrespect, violence encourages violence." She added: "When the powerful use their position, to bully others, then we all lose.” Trump then tweeted that Streep was “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood” and “servant” to Hillary Clinton.

At the end of January 2017, after 20 years of preparation, the wrapping artist Christo ( Verveilder Reichstag ) stopped his “Over the River” project , which covers parts of the Arkansas River in the US state of Colorado with lengths of silver fabric: “Here, the US federal government is our landlord. She owns the land. I can't do a project that will benefit this landlord.”

In her song Nasty Man , released in early April 2017, Joan Baez referred to Trump's insult to his opponent Hillary Clinton during the last TV duel in the campaign as a "nasty woman".

Two documentaries, You've Been Trumped (2011) and A Dangerous Game (2014), chronicled local initiatives' struggle against Trump-planned golf courses. On October 18, 2016, filmmaker Michael Moore released the scathing political documentary Michael Moore in TrumpLand . The documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 followed in 2018 , in which Moore deals with the Trump presidency.

In his novel Golden House (2017) , Salman satirizes Rushdie Trump in the character of comic book villain Joker .

For the 2020 United States Presidential Election , Roy Zimmerman posted a parody of the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight called The Liar Tweets Tonight on YouTube.

Hairstyle ("comb over")

Trump's hairstyle, a so-called comb-over , in which long strands of hair are combed over bald spots on the head, has often been received in pop culture. In 2008, the British tabloid Daily Mail published a description of the "gravity-defying Donald Trump combover" ("gravity-defying Donald Trump comb-over"), which according to the scheme combines four combing directions. In 2011, Time Magazine published a hairstyle scheme that combines three directions of combing. In 2013, the BuzzFeed portal published an article entitled "The 23 Most Important Comb-Overs of Congress". In it, Rep. Steve Chabot 's hairstyle is compared to Trump's "'Round the World' technique." Vanity Fair magazine ran an "Illustrated History" of his hairstyle. In 2015, a Simpsons video sequence titled Trumptastic Voyage was released , in which Homer Simpson floats through Trump's hairstyle, which he describes as a "gravity-defying combover." During the election campaign, musician Jello Biafra wrote a play entitled Satan 's Combover . Numerous media outlets wrote about Trump's combing technique and showed pictures of his hairdo being blown about by the wind. Canadian entomologist Vazrick Nazari named the moth species Neopalpa donaldtrumpi after Trump in 2017 due to the resemblance of the yellowish-white scales on the head of adult males to Trump's hairstyle. Demonstrations have seen placards with the slogan "We Shall Overcomb," which alludes to the protest song We Shall Overcome . In his 2017 tell-all book Fire and Fury , journalist Michael Wolff quotes Trump's daughter Ivanka for a detailed account of his hairdoing process:

She often explained the process to her friends: a totally bald top of the head – a clearly defined island since a scalp reduction surgery – surrounded by a fringe of furry hair on the front and sides. From there, all the ends of the hair are combed up and brought together in the middle, then everything is combed back and fixed with hairspray.

Trump demonstrated at a campaign event in 2018 how he covered a bald spot on the back of his head. In 2019, Swedish watchmaker Triwa produced a wristwatch featuring a caricature of Trump's head, with hands shaped like strands of hair. In the Family Guy episode Trump Guy ( 2019), Peter Griffin, as Trump's press secretary, is given the task of checking rooms for static electricity before Trump enters. When he shakes Trump's hand after opening a door, his hair sticks out. Since 2020, the British satirical doll series Spitting Image has featured Donald Trump's hairdo as a separate character with a face, leaving the Trump doll's bald head. During the 2020 campaign, The New York Times released details from Trump's tax return, which revealed $70,000 spent on hair care during his previous tenure as host of The Apprentice .

honors and awards

Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Close up of the head of the Palpemoth species Neopalpa donaldtrumpi

Publications (selection)

  • with Tony Schwartz: Trump. The Art of Success . Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-04005-8 (Original: Trump: The Art of the Deal. Random House, 1987, ISBN 978-0-345-47917-4 ).
  • with Meredith McIver: Never give up! How I turned my greatest challenges into my greatest triumphs. Translated by Isabel Lamberty-Klaas. Redline, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-636-01596-9 (Original: Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success. Wiley, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-19084-5 ).
  • with Bill Zanker: Don't make a mess, be big! The roadmap to success penned by a billionaire. Stock market media, Kulmbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-938350-73-7 (Original: Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life. Harper, 2007).
  • with Meredith McIver: How to Get Rich. Translated by Horst Fugger. FinanzBuch, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89879-080-0 (Original: Trump: How to Get Rich. Ballantine, 2004, ISBN 978-0-345-48103-0 ).
  • GREAT AGAIN! – How I will save America . Plassen Buchverlage, Kulmbach 2017, ISBN 978-3-86470-384-3 ( Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again. Threshold Editions, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-5011-3796-9 ).

See also

documentaries

  • Michael Moore in TrumpLand . 73 min. A film directed by Michael Moore . United States 2016.
  • The Trumps - From the Palatinate to the White House. 48 min. A film by Paul Berczeller. United Kingdom 2017.
  • Trump: An American Dream. 4 episodes (title names: Manhattan, The Gambler, Citizen Trump, Politics), 222 min. UK 2017.
  • Fahrenheit 11/9 . 128 min. A film by Michael Moore. United States 2018.
  • The Trump Dynasty - The Road to Power. 3 Episodes (Title Names: Born, High Stakes, The Trump Show), 258 min. USA 2019.
  • Trump's Dirty Deal - The President and the Ukraine Affair. 58 min. A film by Jacques Charmelot and Francois Chayé. France 2020.
  • Divided America: Trump: America first! (= Frontline. Season 38, Episode 3). 106 min. A film by Michael Kirk. United States 2020.
  • America has a choice: Trump versus Biden. 110 min. A film by Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser. United States 2020.
  • Trump and the FBI – An American Affair. 90 min. A film by David Carr-Brown and Fabrizio Calvi. France/Germany 2020.
  • Trump's legacy - America torn. 45 min. A film by Carsten Obländer. Germany 2021.

literature

(in alphabetical order)

web links

Commons : Donald Trump  - Collection of images

itemizations

  1. Joe Biden wins presidential election . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 7 November 2020, accessed 7 November 2020.
  2. Biden Wins Presidency, Ending Four Tumultuous Years Under Trump . In: The New York Times . 7 November 2020, accessed 7 November 2020.
  3. Impeachment of Donald Trump: Chuck Schumer calls acquittal a "disgrace". In: THE MIRROR. Retrieved February 14, 2021 .
  4. Presidential Historians Survey 2021 at c-span.org. Retrieved 2 July 2021 (English).
  5. Mary Pilon: Donald Trump's Immigrant Mother In: The New Yorker . June 24, 2016.
  6. Gwenda Blair : Donald Trump. Master Apprentice. Simon & Schuster , New York 2005, ISBN 0-7432-7510-1 , pp. 5 f .; Roland Paul: The American emigrant Friedrich Trump from Kallstadt and the failure of his return migration. In: Palatinate homeland. Volume 67, 2016, pp. 15–21; Markus Vogel: Ancestors of Frederick Christ "Fred" Trump. In: Gedbas . January 27, 2019 (pedigree of his full brother).
  7. Louis Smullin: John George Trump 1907-1985. In: Memorial Tributes. National Academy of Engineering. Volume 3, 1989, pp. 332-337.
  8. a b Martin Hannan: An inconvenient truth? Donald Trump's Scottish mother was a low-earning migrant. In: The National . May 21, 2016, retrieved March 5, 2021 .
  9. Gwenda Blair: The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015, p. 229.
  10. Donald J. Trump, Tony Schwartz: Trump. The Art of the Deal. Ballantine, New York 1987, ISBN 0-345-47917-3 , p. 66 ; also Andrew Kaczynski: Trump Mocks Warren's Native American Heritage Claim, But Falsely Claimed His Family Was Swedish. In: BuzzFeed . August 17, 2015.
  11. Despite what Donald Trump keeps saying, his father was born in New York, not Germany , Tom Kertscher in PolitFact, online April 4, 2019
  12. Gwenda Blair : The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster , New York 2015, pp. 162–164.
  13. Gwenda Blair: The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015, pp. 167–169.
  14. Gwenda Blair: The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015, pp. 225f.
  15. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 33-42.
  16. Matt Viser: Even in College, Donald Trump Was Brash. In: The Boston Globe . Aug 28, 2015; Gwenda Blair: Donald Trump. The Candidate. Simon and Schuster, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-4391-2937-1 , p. 16 ff.
  17. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 48.
  18. Kurtis Lee: How deferments protected Donald Trump from serving in Vietnam. In: Los Angeles Times . Aug 4, 2016.
  19. see also nytimes.com December 26, 2018: Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam?
  20. James Barron: Trump's Get Divorce; Next, Who Gets What? In: The New York Times . December 12, 1990.
  21. Documenting Trump's Abuse of Women at newyorker.com, October 24, 2016, accessed May 28, 2017
  22. Life as Donald Trump's Wife: Ivana Trump Speaks Out! | Good Morning Britain. Retrieved January 25, 2019 .
  23. Lara and Eric Trump welcome second child . NBC Montana, August 20, 2019.
  24. Jason Horowitz, Familiar Talk on Women, From an Unfamiliar Trump. In: The New York Times . August 18, 2015.
  25. Gwenda Blair: The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015, pp. 242-245.
  26. Jason Horowitz: For Donald Trump, Lessons From a Brother's Suffering. In: The New York Times . January 2, 2016; Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 93 f.
  27. Jack Jenkins/Maina Mwaura: Trump, confirmed a Presbyterian, now identifies as 'non-denominational Christian'. In: Religion News Service. 23 October 2020, retrieved 25 October 2020 .
  28. Tracie Rozhon: Fred C. Trump, Postwar Master Builder of Housing for Middle Class, Dies at 93. In: The New York Times . June 26, 1999.
  29. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 51 f.
  30. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 57–59.
  31. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 54 f.
  32. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 59 and 63–68.
  33. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 70–78 and 84 f.
  34. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 81–83.
  35. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 85–90 and 94–96.
  36. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 96 and 98 f.
  37. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 99-101.
  38. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 103–110 and 119 f.
  39. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 124-137.
  40. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 128.
  41. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 132-139.
  42. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 191.
  43. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 140-144.
  44. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 145–147.
  45. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 147–151.
  46. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 188 f.
  47. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 193–196.
  48. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 188–190, 197 f. and 205 f.
  49. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 200 f.
  50. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017, p. 203 f.
  51. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 206-209.
  52. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 209-212.
  53. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 212f.
  54. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 213f.
  55. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 217–220.
  56. Hudson Hongo: A Comprehensive List of Everyone Trying to Sever Ties With Donald Trump. In: Gawker. July 7, 2015.
  57. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 221–224.
  58. Heinrich Lenhardt: Legendarily Bad: Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon - Beat the Trump! GameStar, March 30, 2016.
  59. Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon . IGN, August 28, 2004. Retrieved July 11, 2018
  60. Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon: The Kotaku Review . Kotaku, January 23, 2017. Retrieved July 11, 2018.
  61. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 225–227.
  62. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 228-236.
  63. Trump's 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential nominee. In: USA Today , June 1, 2016.
  64. Justice accuses Donald Trump's university of cheating. In: Die Welt , 26 August 2013.
  65. Allegations of bogus university: Trump fails in fight against fraud lawsuit. In: Mirror Online . March 2, 2016.
  66. Trump pays $25 million in compensation. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 18, 2016.
  67. Trump announces dissolution of his own foundation. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 25, 2016.
  68. New York attorney general investigating Trump's foundation. In: CBS News. September 14, 2016
  69. Kevin Sack, Steve Eder: New Records Shed Light on Donald Trump's $25,000 Gift to Florida Official. In: The New York Times. September 14, 2016.
  70. Charity law investigation: Trump announces dissolution of his controversial foundation. In: Mirror Online . December 25, 2016.
  71. Dan Alexander, How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business . In: Forbes.com , June 6, 2017.
  72. FAZ.net June 14, 2018: New York judiciary sued Donald Trump
  73. reuters.com: New York sues Trump, his foundation, over 'self-dealing'
  74. politico.com: New York AG sues Trump, alleging 'illegal conduct' at his charity
  75. Ines Zöttl: Donald Trump: His wealth is dwindling - and the prosecutors are already waiting. In: THE MIRROR. Retrieved November 30, 2020 .
  76. Danny Hakim, Mike McIntire, William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess: Trump Tax Write-Offs Are Ensnared in 2 New York Fraud Investigations . In: The New York Times . 20 November 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed 30 November 2020]).
  77. Donald Trump: New York Attorney's Office criminal investigation. In: The Mirror. Retrieved 19 May 2021 .
  78. tagesschau.de: Suspicion of tax fraud: charges against Trump's family holding company. Retrieved 2 July 2021 .
  79. Trump Organization indicted for tax fraud . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed 2 July 2021]).
  80. see also www.washingtonpost.com July 4, 2021: Trump appears to acknowledge tax schemes while questioning whether alleged violations are crimes
  81. Gabriel Knupfer: This is Donald Trump's private Boeing 757. In: aeroTELEGRAPH , August 29, 2016.
  82. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 293f.
  83. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 294–297.
  84. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. Simon & Schuster, London 2017, pp. 300-304.
  85. Timothy L. O'Brien: Dear Mr. Trump: I'm Worth $10 Billion, Too. In: Bloomberg . July 21, 2015.
  86. Gerry Mullany: Donald Trump Claims His Wealth Exceeds 'Ten Billion Dollars'. In: The New York Times . July 15, 2015.
  87. The World's Billionaires. #405: Donald Trump. In: Forbes . Retrieved June 17, 2015; Richard Rubin: Here's Our Tally of Donald Trump's Wealth. In: Bloomberg . July 28, 2015.
  88. Donald Trump falls behind. In: Badische Zeitung . March 21, 2017.
  89. The definitive net worth of Donald Trump , Forbes, February 2018
  90. zeit.de November 15, 2019: Donald Trump is taking the tax dispute to the Supreme Court
  91. Matea Gold, Drew Harwell, Rosalind S. Helderman: Trump retains assets worth at least $1.4 billion, new disclosure shows. In: The Washington Post , June 16, 2017.
  92. Trump's Debts Are Widely Held on Wall Street, Creating New Potential Conflicts. In: The Wall Street Journal . January 5, 2017.
  93. David Barstow, Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father , October 2, 2018, The New York Times .
  94. a b Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, Mike McIntire: Trump's Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance . In: The New York Times . 27 September 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed 28 September 2020]).
  95. Talis Shelbourne: Fact Check: Is Donald Trump More Than $400 Million in Debt? In: Heavy.com. 8 October 2020, retrieved 11 October 2020 (American English).
  96. Associated Press: Report that Trump is $400 million in debt raises national-security concerns. Retrieved October 11, 2020 (American English).
  97. FAZ.net December 18, 2020: Trump takes care of himself
  98. Donald Trump: Defeat in dispute over tax documents . In: The Mirror . December 15, 2021, ISSN  2195-1349 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 15, 2021]).
  99. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed . Simon & Schuster, London 2017. pp. 273f and 289f.
  100. Scott Feinberg, Donald Trump Angled for Soviet Posting in 1980s, Says Nobel Prize Winner. In: Hollywood Reporters . May 26, 2017.
  101. Abbie VanSickle: Confused by Trump's Russia Ties? This timeline breaks it down for you , April 6, 2017, medium.com
  102. Daniel Bates: New book claims Trump was compromised by Russian spies in 1987 , 10 August 2018, The New Zealand Herald
  103. Michael Oreskes: Trump Gives a Vague Hint of Candidacy. In: The New York Times . September 2, 1987.
  104. William C. Troft, Deadly Donald, UPI, April 3, 1989. Trump said in that interview that he wanted these killers to be hated, "They should be made to suffer, and if they kill, they should be made responsible for their crimes." get executed."
  105. Joshua Green, Devil's Bargain. Penguin, New York 2017, p. 37.
  106. Joshua Green, Devil's Bargain. Penguin, New York 2017, p. 37 f.
  107. Joshua Green: Devil's Bargain . Penguin, New York 2017, p. 38.
  108. Trump endorses McCain. In: CNN.com . September 18, 2008.
  109. Joshua Gillin: Bush says Trump was a Democrat longer than a Republican 'in the last decade'. In: PolitiFact.com. August 24, 2015.
  110. Will Cabaniss: Donald Trump's campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans. In: PolitiFact.com. July 9, 2015; Nick Gass: Donald Trump Has Spent Years Courting Hillary and Other Dems. In: Politics . June 16, 2015.
  111. Trump Not Running for President. In: CNN.com . May 16, 2011.
  112. Glenn Kessler: A Look at Trump's 'Birther' Statements. In: The Washington Post . April 28, 2011.
  113. Joshua Green : Devil's Bargain . Penguin, New York 2017, pp. 32–36 and 39 f.
  114. Nate Cohn: The Trump Campaign's Turning Point. In: The New York Times . July 18, 2015.
  115. Steve Eder: Donald Trump Opposed Iraq War — but After It Started. In: The New York Times . September 16, 2015.
  116. Carl Cannon: Why Donald Trump Didn't Run as a Democrat. In: RealClearPolitics. July 21, 2015.
  117. President Wryneck. In: Daily Gazette . November 24, 2016.
  118. Bruce Bartlett, 'Trump Is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas'. In: Politics . June 24, 2017.
  119. Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher: Trump Revealed. An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power. Scribner, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-5011-5577-2 , pp. 275 f. limited preview in Google book search.
  120. Playboy Interview: Donald Trump (1990). In: Playboy. March 14, 2016.
  121. Christoph Schäfer: Trump after Merkel's visit: "Germany owes huge sums to NATO". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 18, 2017.
  122. Peter Baker: Trump's Previous View of NATO Is Now Obsolete. In: The New York Times . April 13, 2017.
  123. Jeremy Diamond: Donald Trump lavishes praises on 'leader' Putin. In: CNN . March 5, 2016.
  124. Trump accepts Putin's compliments - "on behalf of our country". In: Spiegel Online , December 20, 2015.
  125. Trump congratulated Putin in 2007: "I'm a big fan". In: The Mirror. 19 August 2020, retrieved 23 August 2020 .
  126. Trump: Crimea's People Prefer Russia, But If He's Elected Putin Is 'Not Going Into Ukraine'. In: ABC News , July 31, 2016.
  127. Samuel Osborne: Donald Trump accuses Russia of taking Crimea by force in attempt to distance himself from campaign allegations. In: The Independent . February 15, 2017.
  128. a b US wants to supply arms to Ukraine. In: Time Online. December 23, 2017.
  129. Donald Trump: I'd Bring Back 'A Hell of a Lot Worse than Waterboarding'. In: The Guardian . February 7, 2016
  130. Dan Lamothe, Jose A. DelReal: Trump backs down from waterboarding comments, says he won't ask troops to violate law. In: The Washington Post . March 4, 2016.
  131. Emma Brown: Trump Criticizes Bush for Supporting Common Core. In: The Washington Post . September 16, 2015.
  132. Abby Jackson: Here's where Donald Trump stands on education. In: Business Insider. November 9, 2016.
  133. Rachel Weiner: Trump: Mitt Romney's 'Maniacal' Self-deportation Policy Costs him Minorities. In: The Washington Post . November 26, 2012.
  134. Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again. ( Memento of September 29, 2015 at the Internet Archive ) In: DonaldJTrump.com.
  135. Ansgar Graw: Trump 'sounds more like leader of a lynch mob'. In : Welt.de. December 8, 2015.
  136. United Against the Hetzer. In: Mirror Online . December 10, 2015.
  137. Brits call for a travel ban for Donald Trump. In : NDR.de. December 10, 2015.
  138. Trump calls for complete travel ban on Muslims. In: The World . December 7, 2016.
  139. Eugene Scott, Sara Murray: Donald Trump Changes Tone on Syrian Refugees. In: CNN.com . September 10, 2015.
  140. Elias Isquith, "If I Win, They're Going Back". Why Donald Trump's Threat to Refugees is the Key to his Campaign. In: Salon.com . October 1, 2015.
  141. Arne Delfs: Merkel Dodges Trump's 'Insane' Comment on German Refugee Influx. In: Bloomberg . October 12, 2015.
  142. a b Edward Wong: Trump Has Called Climate Change a Chinese Hoax. Beijing Says It Is Anything But. In: The New York Times . November 18, 2016.
  143. Climate change: Trump criticizes Pope Francis. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . September 25, 2015.
  144. Trump tells New York Times there is 'some connectivity' between humans and climate change. In: Business Insider. November 22, 2016.
  145. Trump's energy policy plans: "We will save the coal". In: Mirror Online . May 26, 2016.
  146. www.handelsblatt.com November 23, 2016 / Franz Hubik: Trump rages against German wind power
  147. Donald Trump on Kentucky clerk: Same-sex Marriage the 'Law of the Land'. In: CNN.com . 7th of September.
  148. Donald Trump Probably Just Disappointed A Lot Of Conservatives On Abortion. In: The Huffington Post . December 2, 2015.
  149. TPM Livewire: Donald Trump Slams Fellow GOPers For 'Attacking Social Security' (VIDEO). In: Talking Point's memo.
  150. Donald Trump on Social Security. In: OnTheIssues.org.
  151. Veterans Administration Reforms That Will Make America Great Again. ( Memento of October 31, 2015 at the Internet Archive ) In: DonaldJTrump.com.
  152. David Knowles: Donald Trump Says He Wants to Raise Taxes on Himself. In: Bloomberg . Aug 27, 2015; Jim Tankersley: Republicans Are Going to Hate What Donald Trump Wants to Do to Rich People. In: The Washington Post . Aug 27, 2015; Steve Benen: Trump Breaks with GOP Orthodoxy on Taxes. In: MSNBC . August 27, 2015.
  153. Trump Says Tax Code is Letting Hedge Funds 'Get Away With Murder'. In: Reuters . August 23, 2015.
  154. Neil Irwin, Alan Rappeport: Donald Trump Adopts GOP Tax Cuts, but Balks at Trade Pacts. In: The New York Times , August 8, 2016.
  155. Tax Reform. ( Memento of January 4, 2016 at the Internet Archive ) In: DonaldJTrump.com.
  156. Derek Thompson: A Comprehensive Guide to Donald Trump's Tax Proposal. In: The Atlantic . April 26, 2017.
  157. Trump orders review that could relax Dodd-Frank bank rules. In: BBC.com. February 3, 2017.
  158. Michael Wilson: Trump Draws Criticism for Ad He Ran After Jogger Attack. In: The New York Times , October 23, 2002. For Trump's original text, see Feliks Garcia: Central Park Five: Donald Trump still believes wrongfully convicted black and Latino men are guilty of 1989 rape. In: The Independent . October 7, 2016.
  159. tagesspiegel.de June 8, 2019: "Trump put a bounty on us at the time"
  160. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976)
  161. Donald Trump's Racially Charged Advocacy of the Death Penalty In: The Atlantic . December 18, 2015.
  162. CNN.com June 20, 2016: The times Trump changed his positions on guns
  163. Donald Trump on Gun Control. 2000 Reform Primary Challenger for President. In: OnTheIssues.org. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  164. Charlotte Alter: Donald Trump Says Gun-Free Zones Are 'Target Practice for Sickos'. In: Times . October 28, 2015.
  165. "If people had carried weapons, it would have been different" In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 15, 2015.
  166. Donald Trump on Free Trade. In: OnTheIssues. Last updated December 8, 2015.
  167. Charles Lane, Donald Trump's Contempt for the Free Market. In: The Washington Post . October 21, 2015
  168. Seth McLaughlin: Donald Trump Not a 'Free Market Conservative,' Critics Say. In: The Washington Times . November 25, 2015
  169. Donald Boudreaux: Anyone But Trump. In: The American Spectator . January 26, 2016.
  170. Donald Trump says he wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour. In: BusinessInsider , 27 July 2016.
  171. Polls - Trump: Favorable/Unfavorable. In: RealClearPolitics.
  172. Dirk Nabers, Frank A. Stengel: Trump and Populism. In: Heinrich Böll Foundation , March 2, 2017. An overview of racism in Lydia O'Connor, Daniel Marans: Here Are 16 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist. In: The Huffington Post , December 13, 2016. On the escalation strategy, see William Finnegan: The Escalating Slurs of Donald Trump. In: The New Yorker . December 3, 2015.
  173. Election campaign of the dumbass. In: Mirror Online . July 9, 2015.
  174. Matt Ford: Why Is Donald Trump So Angry at Judge Gonzalo Curiel? In: The Atlantic . June 3, 2016.
  175. Deirdre Walsh, Manu Raju: Paul Ryan rips Donald Trump remarks as 'textbook definition' of a racist comment. In: CNN.com. June 7, 2016.
  176. Inga Catharina Thomas: Megyn Kelly: The woman who made Donald Trump mad. In: The World . August 10, 2015.
  177. Emily Yahr, Elahe Izadi: Billy Bush was already polarizing. His lewd Donald Trump conversation makes things much worse. In: The Washington Post. October 7, 2016
  178. Transcripts: What the mics caught Donald Trump saying in 2005 and what he said in his taped apology. In: The Los Angeles Times . October 7, 2016.
  179. Daniel Nichanian: Republican Officials Are Stampeding Away From Trump . In: FiveThirtyEight . October 8, 2016.
  180. "Enough". In: Spiegel Online , October 13, 2016; Michelle Obama denies Trump decency. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 14, 2016.
  181. a b Jane Mayer: The reclusive hedge-fund tycoon behind the Trump presidency. In: The New Yorker. March 27, 2017.
  182. Allan Smith: A Trump-backed group's effort to attack a GOP senator shows just how far politically active nonprofits can go. In: Business Insider. July 1, 2017.
  183. Michael Wolff: Donald Trump Didn't Want to Be President. In: New York , January 3, 2018.
  184. 2016 Electoral College Results. In: US National Archives and Records Administration ; Official 2016 Presidential General Election Results. In: Federal Election Commission .
  185. Ken Bensinger, Miriam Elder, Mark Schoofs: These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia. In: BuzzFeed , 10 January 2017. See the Trump Intelligence Allegations dossier on Documentcloud.org.
  186. Michael Isikoff: How the Trump administration's secret efforts to ease Russia sanctions fell short. In: Yahoo News. June 1, 2017.
  187. Kevin Uhrmacher, Kim Soffen: A guide to the five major investigations of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. In: The Washington Post. May 30, 2017
  188. Amber Phillips: The Senate's new Russia report just undercut Trump in two big ways. In: The Washington Post , May 16, 2018.
  189. Bonnie Berkowitz, Denise Lu, Julie Vitkovskaya: Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests. In: The Washington Post , March 31, 2017 (updated continuously).
  190. Julia Ainsley, Tom Winter: Mueller Team Asking if Trump Tried to Hide Purpose of Trump Tower Meeting. In: NBC News . August 28, 2017.
  191. Jim Sciutto, Carl Bernstein, Marshall Cohen: Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting. In: CNN.com. July 27, 2018.
  192. Michael Cohen: Three years in prison for Donald Trump's ex-lawyer , December 12, 2018, Der Spiegel . Retrieved September 7, 2020.
  193. Trump's baseless wireless app claim. In: CNN.com. Retrieved March 6, 2017
  194. Trump wiretap: FBI chief Comey 'rejects' allegation. In: BBC.com. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  195. Deirdre Walsh: Justice Department: No evidence Trump Tower was wiretapped. In: CNN.com . September 2, 2017
  196. Jane Chong, Benjamin Wittes: It's Time: Congress Needs to Open a Formal Impeachment Inquiry. In: Lawfare. August 28, 2017.
  197. Matthew Rosenberg, Matt Apuzzo: Days Before He Was Fired, Comey Asked for Money for Russia Investigation. In: The New York Times . May 10, 2017.
  198. John Cassidy: Donald Trump's Firing of James Comey Is an Attack on American Democracy. In: The New Yorker . May 9, 2017
  199. Todd S. Purdum: Trump pulls from Nixon's playbook. In: Politics . May 9, 2017.
  200. Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman: Mueller Has Early Draft of Trump Letter Giving Reasons for Firing Comey. In: The New York Times . September 1, 2017.
  201. Julie Hirschfeld Davis: Trump Bars US Press, but Not Russia's, at Meeting With Russian Officials. In: The New York Times , May 10, 2017.
  202. Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe: Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador. In: The Washington Post . May 15, 2017
  203. Trump admits leaking information to Russia. In: Mirror Online . May 16, 2017.
  204. Original: "I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.” Quoted from Matt Apuzzo, Maggie Haberman, Matthew Rosenberg: Trump Told Russians That Firing 'Nut Job' Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation. In: The New York Times. May 19, 2017.
  205. Michael S. Schmidt: Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation. In: The New York Times . May 16, 2017
  206. Tom LoBianco: 10 things we learned from the James Comey hearing. In: CNN.com . June 8, 2017.
  207. Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima: Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence. In: The Washington Post. May 22, 2017.
  208. Rebecca R. Ruiz, Mark Landler: Robert Mueller, Former FBI Director, Is Named Special Counsel for Russia Investigation. In: The New York Times . May 17, 2017.
  209. Michael Isikoff: Four top law firms turned down requests to represent Trump. In: Yahoo News. June 6, 2017.
  210. Devlin Barrett, Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, Sari Horwitz: Special counsel is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice, officials say. In: The Washington Post . June 14, 2017.
  211. Taegan Goddard: Trump Dismisses Obstruction Investigation. In: Political Wire. June 15, 2017.
  212. See #RealNews on Trump et L'Affaire Russe: A Resource Page. In: Lawfare. On financial relations Jonathan Chait: Trump's Russia Scandal Is Becoming a Corruption Scandal. In: New York . May 22, 2017; Jonathan Chait: Now We Have a Road Map to the Trump Campaign's Collusion With Russia. In: New York . July 1, 2017.
  213. Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto, Dana Bash: Sources: Russians discussed potentially 'derogatory' information about Trump and associates during campaign. In: CNN.com. May 30, 2017.
  214. Christopher Bates, Mueller Following the Money. In: Electoral-Vote.com. June 16, 2017.
  215. Gloria Borger, Dana Bash, Pamela Brown, Jeremy Diamond: Trump reshuffling legal team. In: CNN.com. July 21, 2017.
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