Latest videos from the White House, Washington D.C.
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th President of the United States, an American businessman, television personality, and politician.
Trump was born and raised in Queens, New York City, and earned an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He then took charge of The Trump Organization, the real estate and construction firm founded by his paternal grandmother, which he ran for four and a half decades until 2017. During his real estate and business career, Trump built, renovated, and managed numerous office towers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He has lent the use of his name for the branding of various products and properties. He owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants from 1996 to 2015, and he hosted The Apprentice, a reality television series on NBC, from 2004 to 2015. As of 2017, Forbes listed him as the 544th wealthiest person in the world (201st in the United States) with a net worth of $3.5 billion.
Trump first publicly expressed interest in running for political office in 1987. He won two Reform Party presidential primaries in 2000, but withdrew his candidacy early on. In June 2015, he launched his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, and quickly emerged as the front-runner among 17 candidates in the Republican primaries. His final opponents suspended their campaigns in May 2016, and in July he was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention along with Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate. His campaign received unprecedented media coverage and international attention. Many of the statements that he made in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false.
Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He became the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote. His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
+ + + +
Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office of the President of the United States. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until November 2008, when he resigned after his election to the presidency.
Barack Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree, worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.
Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory from a crowded field in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility, and his prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. When Republican nominee Jack Ryan withdrew from the race after a scandal erupted involving the divorce of his wife, actress Jeri Ryan; Republicans approached former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to run against Barack Obama. Mike Ditka decline the offer and Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history.
Obama began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama won his party’s nomination. Barack Obama was now the first major party African American candidate for president, beating a candidate that would have been the first woman to run as major party candidate. A controversy grew over Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Many women believed she chose race over her trademark advocacy of women.
In the 2008 general election, Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as President of the United State of America on January 20, 2009.
In the 2012 general election, Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney and was inaugurated as President of the United State of America on January 21, 2013.