First presidency of Donald Trump
's first tenure as the president of the United States began on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated as the 45th president, and ended on January20, 2021.
Trump, a member of the Republican Party, took office after defeating the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his 2016 campaign and first presidency. Alongside Trump's first presidency, the Republican Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 115th U.S. Congress following the 2016 elections, thereby attained an overall federal government trifecta. His presidency ended following his re-election defeat to the Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the First Step Act, and a partial repeal of the Dodd–Frank Act. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Trump sought substantial spending cuts to major welfare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but rescinded the individual mandate. Trump reversed numerous environmental regulations and withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He enacted tariffs, triggering retaliatory tariffs from China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and signed the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, a successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement with modest changes. Trump oversaw the third-biggest federal deficit growth of any president; it significantly increased under Trump due to spending increases and tax cuts.
Trump implemented a controversial family separation policy for migrants apprehended at the United States–Mexico border, starting in 2018. His demand for the federal funding of a border wall resulted in the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, a record that stood until 2025. In 2020, he deployed federal law enforcement forces in response to racial unrest.
Trump's "America First" foreign policy was characterized by unilateral actions and disregarding traditional norms and allies. His administration implemented a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia; denied citizens from six Muslim-majority countries entry into the United States; recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; and brokered the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states. Trump withdrew United States troops from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to occupy the area. His administration made a conditional deal with the Taliban to withdraw United States troops from Afghanistan in 2021. Trump met North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un three times. He withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement and later escalated tensions in the Persian Gulf by ordering the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation concluded that Russia interfered to favor Trump's candidacy and that, while the prevailing evidence "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government", possible obstructions of justice occurred during the course of that investigation. Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into Biden. This triggered Trump's first impeachment by the House of Representatives on December18, 2019; he was acquitted by the Senate on February5, 2020.
Trump reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging, and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the availability of testing. After signing the CARES Act, Trump initiated Operation Warp Speed to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Following his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Biden, Trump alleged widespread electoral fraud and initiated an extensive campaign to overturn the results. At a rally on January 6, 2021, Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, where the electoral votes were being counted by Congress in order to formalize Biden's victory. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, suspending the count and causing Vice President Mike Pence and other members of Congress to be evacuated. On January 13, the House voted to impeach Trump an unprecedented second time for incitement of insurrection, but he was later acquitted by the Senate again on February13, after he had already left office.
Trump later ran for re-election again in the 2024 presidential election, and he was successfully re-elected to a second, non-consecutive term, after defeating Biden's vice president Kamala Harris. He started his second presidency on January 20, 2025, as the 47th president, thus becoming the second former U.S. president to return to office.
Milestones
2016 election
Trump announced his candidacy for the nomination of the Republican Party in the 2016 presidential election on June 16, 2015. In May 2016, Trump secured the Republican nomination. Trump selected Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as his running mate, and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention.Early on November 9, 2016, the day after the election, Trump was projected to have secured the presidency. Trump won the presidential election with 304 electoral votes and 46.1% of the popular vote, while Hillary Clinton received 227 electoral votes and 48.2% of the popular vote. Trump thus became the fifth person to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. The electoral votes were certified on January 6, 2017. In the concurrent congressional elections, Republicans secured a government trifecta after retaining their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both remained in their posts.
Transition period and inauguration
The presidential transition period began following Trump's victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, though Trump had chosen Bill Hagerty to begin planning for the transition in August 2016. During the transition period, Trump announced nominations for his cabinet and administration.Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, officially assuming the presidency at 12:00 pm, EST. He was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts. In his seventeen-minute inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of contemporary America, pledging to end "American carnage" caused by urban crime and saying America's "wealth, strength, and confidence has dissipated" by jobs lost overseas. He declared his strategy would be "America First." The largest single-day protest in U.S. history, the Women's March, took place the day after his inauguration and was driven by opposition to Trump and his policies and views.
First 100 days
The first hundred days of a President's term have been historically significant since the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt who, in his first 100 days, worked on both legislative and executive actions to combat the great depression. In Trump's first hundred days, he signed 24 executive orders, 22 presidential memoranda, 20 presidential proclamations, and 28 bills.Near the end of the 100 days, the Trump administration introduced a broad outline of a sweeping tax reform focusing on deep tax cuts. Although Trump had to concede to delay funding for the U.S.–Mexico border wall he had promised, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown a few days before the end of the first 100 days.
Administration
The Trump administration was characterized by record turnover, particularly among White House staff. By early 2018, 43% of senior White House positions had turned over. The administration had a higher turnover rate in the first two and a half years than the five previous presidents did over their entire terms.By October 2019, one in 14 of Trump's political appointees were former lobbyists; less than three years into his presidency, Trump had appointed more than four times as many lobbyists than his predecessor Barack Obama did over the course of his first six years in office.
Trump's cabinet included U.S. senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions as attorney general, banker Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, retired Marine Corps general James Mattis as Defense Secretary, and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Trump also brought on board politicians who had opposed him during the presidential campaign, such as neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Cabinet
Days after the presidential election, Trump selected RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff. Trump chose Sessions for the position of attorney general.In February 2017, Trump formally announced his cabinet structure, elevating the Director of National Intelligence and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to cabinet level. The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, which had been added to the cabinet by Obama in 2009, was removed from the cabinet. Trump's cabinet consisted of 24 members, more than Obama at 23 or George W. Bush at 21.
On February 13, 2017, Trump fired Michael Flynn from the post of National Security Advisor on grounds that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia. Flynn was fired amidst the ongoing controversy concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election and accusations that Trump's electoral team colluded with Russian agents.
In July 2017, John F. Kelly, who had served as secretary of Homeland Security, replaced Priebus as chief of staff. In September 2017, Tom Price resigned as Secretary of HHS amid criticism over his use of private charter jets for personal travel. Kirstjen Nielsen succeeded Kelly as secretary in December 2017. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired via a tweet in March 2018; Trump appointed Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson and Gina Haspel to succeed Pompeo as the director of the CIA. In the wake of a series of scandals, Scott Pruitt resigned as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in July 2018. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis informed Trump of his resignation following Trump's abrupt December 19, 2018, announcement that the remaining 2,000 American troops in Syria would be withdrawn, against the recommendations of his military and civilian advisors.
Trump fired numerous inspectors general of agencies, including those who were probing the Trump administration and close Trump associates. In 2020, he fired five inspectors general in two months. The Washington Post wrote, "For the first time since the system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, inspectors general find themselves under systematic attack from the president, putting independent oversight of federal spending and operations at risk."