The Making of the Trump Brand

Donald Trump is an American real estate developer, media personality, and former U.S.

president whose rise was driven as much by image and attention as by business success.

Born in Queens, New York, in 1946, he was raised wealthy by his father,

Fred Trump, a hard-driving real estate developer who taught him discipline, competitiveness,

and never admitting defeat. Sent to military school at 13, Trump thrived in

rigid, hierarchical environments where winning mattered above all else. Early in his career,

Trump learned to fight lawsuits aggressively, deny wrongdoing, and control the narrative most notably

during a 1970s federal housing discrimination case. In the 1980s, he reinvented himself