Four months before US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump face off at the polls, they will wage political battle Thursday in the first televised debate of the 2024 election.
The candidates are polling neck and neck ahead of the November 5 vote as they attempt to woo any Americans still fine-tuning their decision.
Here are some of the major biographical details to know about Trump, a Republican whose supporters remain wildly devoted despite his multiple criminal charges and the first felony conviction against a former president.
– Political experience –
The bombastic 78-year-old billionaire was a political novice when he successfully ran for president in 2016 against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Until that point, Trump had never been up for election in any race involving a popular vote.
However, he had often repeated that he might run for the White House, an assertion that was widely considered a publicity stunt.
– Family and religion –
Trump was born in 1946 to a wealthy New York family. Contrary to legend, he is not a self-made man, but rather followed in the footsteps of his father, who built a family empire constructing buildings in the area.
Trump was handed the reins to the family business in the 1970s, and later became a fixture in US households via his reality TV show “The Apprentice,” which first aired in 2004.
The father of five children via three different wives is hardly a model of Christian piety, yet he has deftly wooed America’s evangelical right.
Constantly praising family and religious values, Trump landed conservative Christians a resounding victory with the appointment of Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the national right to an abortion.
– Wealth –
Trump’s finances have been the subject of much speculation over the years. However a judge ruled earlier this year that Trump and his company had unlawfully inflated his wealth and manipulated the value of properties to obtain favorable bank loans or insurance terms.
That said, Trump remains exceedingly rich: He is worth no less than several billion dollars according to Forbes magazine, thanks to his real estate empire and the Trump Media and Technology Group, which includes his social media platform Truth Social.
– Vibe –
Pugnacious, angry and a populist, Trump stunned the world when he was elected president in 2016.
Worshiped by supporters, he is considered by detractors to be a danger to American democracy and to the country’s traditional international alliances.
The former president is combatively thin-skinned, yet relentlessly mocks his political rivals with rhetoric that has become increasingly belligerent as the election approaches.
He labels his opponents “fascists,” while saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
And he still claims, falsely, to have won the 2020 election.
– Legal woes –
Trump’s life is awash with substantial legal allegations, convictions and rulings.
Most recently in May he was convicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during the heat of the 2016 election.
That made Trump the first ever former US president convicted of a felony. He is due for sentencing on July 11.
Trump faces three other pending criminal cases, including charges related to his unprecedented attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, both at the federal level and in Georgia — where he asked officials to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
He is additionally accused of illegally retaining secret nuclear and defense documents after leaving the White House at his Florida estate.
Apart from the criminal cases, Trump was found liable in a civil case for sexually abusing former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996 and defaming her, with a judge ordering him to pay her $88 million.
He was also fined $355 million plus interest by a New York judge for manipulating the value of properties to obtain favorable loans.
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