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The US presidential election enters its final day on Monday, as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris frantically trying to rally supporters to cast ballots in what each candidate frames as an existential struggle for the country.
Despite the startling swirl of events over the past few months, the electorate is split evenly, both nationally and in the seven battleground states that will determine the winner on Tuesday. However, given the fact that the race is so tight, it may take days for a winner to be announced.
Trump, a 78-year-old Republican front-runner, survived two assassination attempts, one by millimeters, just weeks after a jury in New York – the city whose tabloids first elevated him to national fame and notoriety – made him the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.
Who is Donald Trump?
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York. His parents were Fredrick Trump, Sr., a real estate developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who came to the United States as a Scottish immigrant. The Tudor-style home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, served as his residence with siblings. He went the New York Military Academy at 13. After two years of attending Fordham University, he went on to graduate from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968.
In 1971, Trump took control of his father’s real estate business, renamed it the Trump Organization, and focused on big-profile projects, which included skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. His book, “The Art of the Deal”, published in 1987, made him a celebrity; he later joined the reality TV program “The Celebrity Apprentice” from 2004 through 2015.
Family Life
Trump’s private life has not been a secret by any means. He had married first to Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model and athlete, whom he fathered three children (Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric) with before their messy divorce in 1990 with claims of marital abuse.
He married actress Marla Maples in 1993, shortly after their daughter Tiffany was born; the couple divorced in 1999. Melania Knauss, a former model from Slovenia, is currently Trump’s wife. Melania and Donald married in 2005 and have a son, Barron who recently turned 18.
Political Career
In June 2015, Trump declared his run for the presidency on a political platform of “making America great again,” promising millions of new jobs and punishment for companies who outsourced jobs.
He defeated Hillary Clinton with an Electoral College vote of 304 to 227. His unexpected win left many raising questions over the election process as well as the strategic miscalculations by Clinton, where experts said she failed to target the decisive voting bloc while Trump appealed to the economically suffering working class people.
During his presidency, Trump withdrew from climate and trade agreements, put a travel ban on seven countries with Muslim-majority populations, enforced hardline immigration policies, initiated a trade war with China, implemented big tax cuts, and changed relations with the Middle East.
A special counsel investigated claims of collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and uncovered enough evidence to lead to charges against 34 people excluding Trump on various offenses. Trump was impeached twice for supposed wrongdoing. The first was for asking a foreign government to investigate presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Senate acquitted him on both counts.
Yet by 2022, despite public backlash following the Capitol riots, where many donors and supporters distanced themselves from him, Trump announced his third presidential bid and was soon declared the GOP front-runner. He faced over a dozen challengers, including his former vice president, but maintained his lead, focusing his criticisms on Biden while avoiding debates.
As he now stands facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases, Trump has been successful at pushing back many of those court proceedings, such as the three cases scheduled post-election. His New York sentencing on what most observers say are the weakest of the charges has been set until late November.
With two assassination attempts already behind him and Biden paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris, the world awaits the outcome of US presidential election to see if Trump, one of the most controversial figure US politics, again set foot in the White House.
