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WASHINGTON (AP) The most improbable of presidents, Donald Trump reshaped the office and shattered its centuries-old norms and traditions while dominating the national discourse like no one before.

Trump, governing by whim and tweet, deepened the nations racial and cultural divides and undermined faith in its institutions. His legacy: a tumultuous four years that were marked by his impeachment, failures during the worst pandemic in a century and his refusal to accept defeat.

He smashed conceptions about how presidents behave and communicate, offering unvarnished thoughts and policy declarations alike, pulling back the curtain for the American people while enthralling supporters and unnerving foes and sometimes allies both at home and abroad.

While the nation would be hardpressed to elect another figure as disruptive as Trump, it remains to be seen how much of his imprint on the office itself, occupied by only 44 other men, will be indelible. Already it shadows the work of his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, who framed his candidacy as a repudiation of Trump, offering himself as an antidote to the chaos and dissent of the past four years while vowing to restore dignity to the Oval Office.

For all four years, this is someone who at every opportunity tried to stretch presidential power beyond the limits of the law, said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. He altered the presidency in many ways, but many of them can be changed back almost overnight by a president who wants to make the point that there is a change.

Trumps most enduring legacy may be his use of the trappings of the presidency to erode Americans views of the institutions of their own government.

From his first moments in office, Trump waged an assault on the federal bureaucracy, casting a suspicious eye on career officials he deemed the Deep State and shaking Americans confidence in civil servants and the levers of government. Believing that the investigation into Russian election interference was a crusade to undermine him, Trump went after the intelligence agencies and Justice Department calling out leaders by name and later unleashed broadsides against the man running the probe, respected special counsel Robert Mueller.

His other targets were legion: the Supreme Court for insufficient loyalty; the post office for its handling of mail-in ballots; even the integrity of the vote itself with his baseless claims of election fraud.

In the past, presidents who lost were always willing to turn the office over to the next person. They were willing to accept the vote of the American public, said Richard Waterman, who studies the presidency at the University of Kentucky. What were seeing right now is really an assault on the institutions of democracy.

Current polling suggests that many Americans, and a majority of Republicans, feel that Biden was illegitimately elected, damaging his credibility as he takes office during a crisis and also creating a template of deep suspicion for future elections.

Thats a cancer, Waterman said. I dont know if the cancer can be removed from the presidency without doing damage to the office itself. I think hes done tremendous damage in the last several weeks.

Jeopardizing the peaceful transfer of power was hardly Trumps first assault on the traditions of the presidency.

He didnt release his tax returns or divest himself from his businesses. He doled out government resources on a partisan basis and undermined his own scientists. He rage tweeted at members of his own party and used government property for political purposes, including the White House as the backdrop for his renomination acceptance speech.

Trump used National Guard troops to clear a largely peaceful protest across from the White House for a photo-op. He named a secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, who needed a congressional waiver to serve because the retired general had not been out of uniform for the seven years required by law. In that one example, Biden has followed Trumps lead, nominating for Pentagon chief retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, who also will need a waiver.

Trumps disruption extended to the global stage as well, where he cast doubt on once-inviolable alliances like NATO and bilateral partnerships with a host of allies. His America First foreign policy emanated more from preconceived notions of past slights than current facts on the ground. He unilaterally pulled troops from Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Syria, each time drawing bipartisan fire for undermining the very purpose of the American deployment.

He pulled out of multinational environmental agreements, an action that scientists warn may have accelerated climate change. He stepped away from accords that kept Irans nuclear ambitions, if not its regional malevolence, in check.

And his presidency may be remembered for altering, perhaps permanently, the nature of the U.S.-China relationship, dimming hopes for a peaceful emergence of China as a world power and laying the foundation for a new generation of economic and strategic rivalry.

While historians agree that Trump was a singular figure in the office, it will be decades before the consequences of his tenure are fully known. But some pieces of his legacy already are in place.

He named three Supreme Court justices and more than 220 federal judges, giving the judiciary an enduring conservative bent. He rolled back regulations and oversaw an economy that boomed until the pandemic hit. His presence increased voter turnout both for and against him to record levels. He received unwavering loyalty from his own party but was quick to cast aside any who displeased him.

President Trump has been the person who has returned power to the American people, not the Washington elite, and preserved our history and institutions, while others have tried to tear them down, said White House spokesman Judd Deere. The American people elected a successful businessman who promised to go to Washington, not to tear it down, but to put them first.

At times, Trump acted like a bystander to his own presidency, opting to tweet along with a cable news segment rather than dive into an effort to change policy. And that was one of the many ways Trump changed the way that presidents communicate.

Carefully crafted policy statements took a back seat, replaced by tweets and off-the-cuff remarks to reporters over the whir of helicopter blades. The discourse hardened, with swear words, personal insults and violent imagery infiltrating the presidential lexicon. And there were the untruths more than 23,000, according to a count by The Washington Post that Trump tossed out with little regard for their impact.

It was that lack of honesty that played a role in his defeat in an election that became a referendum on how he had managed the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 300,000 Americans.

Day after day during his reelection campaign, Trump defied health guidelines and addressed packed, largely mask-less crowds, promising the nation was rounding the corner on the virus. He admitted that from the beginning, he set out to play down the seriousness of the virus.

He held superspreader events at the White House and contracted the virus himself. And while his administration spearheaded Operation Warp Speed, which helped to produce coronavirus vaccines in record time, Trump also undermined his public health officials by refusing to embrace mask-wearing and suggesting unproven treatments, including the injection of disinfectant.

We have seen that Donald Trumps style was one of the contributing factors to his failure as a president, said Mark K. Updegrove, presidential historian and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. His successor can look at his presidency as a cautionary tale.

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Trump's legacy: He changed the presidency, but will it last? - Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump, said to be making progress in his recovery from COVID-19, tweeted his eagerness to return to the campaign trail Tuesday even as the outbreak that has killed more than 210,000 Americans reached ever more widely into the upper echelons of the U.S. government.

As Trump convalesced out of sight in the White House, the administration defended the protections it has put in place to protect the staff working there to treat and support him. Trump again publicly played down the virus on Twitter after his return from a three-day hospitalization, though even more aides tested positive, including one of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller.

In one significant national coronavirus action, Trump declared there would be no action before the election on economic-stimulus legislation an announcement that came not long after the Federal Reserve chairman said such help was essential for recovery with the nation reeling from the human and economic cost of the pandemic. Stocks fell on the White House news.

As for Trumps own recovery, his doctor, Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley, said in a letter that the president had a restful Monday night at the White House and reports no symptoms.

Meanwhile, Trump was grappling with next political steps exactly four weeks from Election Day. Anxious to project strength, Trump, who is still contagious with the virus, tweeted Tuesday that he was planning to attend next weeks debate with Democrat Joe Biden in Miami and It will be great!

Biden, for his part, said he and Trump shouldnt have a debate as long as the president remains COVID positive.

Biden told reporters in Pennsylvania that he was looking forward to being able to debate him but said were going to have to follow very strict guidelines.

Elsewhere in the government, the scope of the outbreak was still being uncovered. On Tuesday, the nations top military leaders including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and the vice chairman, Gen. John Hyten, were in quarantine after exposure to Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard.

It was not known how Ray contracted the virus, but he attended an event for military families at the White House on Sept. 27. The Coast Guard said in a statement that Ray felt mild symptoms over the weekend and was tested on Monday.

Also testing positive Tuesday was Miller, a top policy adviser and Trump speechwriter, who has been an architect of the presidents restrictive immigration measures. Millers wife, Katie Miller, who serves as communications director to Vice President Mike Pence, had the virus earlier this year. She had been in Salt Lake City with Pence where he is preparing to debate Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, but she left as soon as she found out about her husbands diagnosis, officials said. She tested negative on Tuesday.

Trump on Monday made clear that he has little intention of abiding by best containment practices when he removed his mask before entering the White House after his discharge from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Waiting aides were visible when he entered the Blue Room without a face covering.

Trumps attitude alarmed infectious disease experts. And it suggested his own illness had not caused him to rethink his often-cavalier attitude toward the disease, which has also infected the first lady and more than a dozen White House aides and associates.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday, When I saw him on the balcony of the White House, taking off his mask, I couldnt help but think that he sent the wrong signal, given that hes infected with COVID-19 and that there are many people in his immediate circle who have the virus,.

Trump, for his part, falsely suggested that the virus was akin to the seasonal flu.

Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu, he tweeted. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!

In fact, COVID-19 has already proven to be a more potent killer, particularly among older populations, than seasonal flu, and has shown indications of having long-term impacts on the health of younger people it infects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that influenza has resulted in far fewer yearly deaths than Trump said between 12,000 and 61,000 annually since 2010.

More on Trump and the Virus:

Trump was working out of makeshift office space on the ground floor of the White House residence, in close proximity to the White House Medical Units office suite, with only a few aides granted a face-to-face audience. The West Wing was largely vacant, as a number of Trumps aides were either sick or quarantining after exposure to people infected with the virus, or otherwise working remotely as a precaution.

First lady Melania Trump was isolating upstairs in the White House. On Tuesday, her office released a memo outlining extensive health and safety precautions that have been put in place in the executive residence, including adopting hospital-grade disinfection policies, encouraging maximum teleworking and installing additional sanitization and filtration systems. Residence staff in direct contact with the first family are tested daily and support staff are tested every 48 hours. And since the president and Mrs. Trump tested positive, staff have been wearing full PPE.

Despite Trumps upbeat talk about the disease, his own treatment has been far from typical, as his doctors rushed him onto experimental antiviral drugs and prescribed an aggressive course of steroids that would be unavailable to the average patient. On Tuesday he was to receive his final dose of the antiviral drug remdesivir. It was not known whether he was still being administered the powerful steroid dexamethasone, which was prescribed Saturday after he suffered a second drop in his blood oxygen levels in as many days.

Dr. Conley said Monday that because of Trumps unusual level of treatment so early after discovery of his illness he was in uncharted territory, adding that Trump would not be fully out of the woods for another week.

The coronavirus can be unpredictable, and Conley has noted it can become more dangerous as the body responds. Days seven through ten can be the most critical in determining the likely course of this illness, he said over the weekend.

There were also lingering questions about potential long-term effects to the president and even when he first came down with the virus. Conley has repeatedly declined to share results of medical scans of Trumps lungs, saying he was not at liberty to discuss the information because Trump did not waive doctor-patient confidentiality on the subject.

___

Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard and Jonathan Lemire in Washington, and Bill Barrow in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report.

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Trump reports 'no symptoms,' returns to downplaying virus - The Associated Press

In his recently published book, Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020. Lawrence R. Douglas, a professor at Amherst College, addressed the possible courses of action that Trump might take if he wants to challenge the Nov. 3 election results

In an online interview about the book, Douglas discussed the nightmare scenario of Trump simply refusing to leave office. I cannot imagine Trump conceding defeatits not in his DNA to do so, Douglas told his interviewer. "If he loses decisivelyand by that, I mean not only in the electoral college vote but also in the popular vote of the swing stateshe will have no choice but to submit to defeat.

But, Douglas added, if his loss turns on the results of mail-in ballot submitted in swing states, then I believe Trump will aggressively work to dispute the result."

Explained Douglas: Its not hard to imagine how this could play out: Trump could enjoy a slim lead in the key swing states on November 3a lead that vanishes once the mail-ins start getting counted in the days following November 3. And yet all the while Trump is pushing his insistence that only election day results should count; indeed, he brazenly declares that his disappearing lead simply proves his claim of mail-in fraud. Delays in the counting of these ballots increase the possibility that our key swing statesall controlled by Republican state legislaturescertify Trump as having won. And so, like in 1876 [and the disputed election between the popular vote winner, Samuel Tilden, and the eventual victor, Rutherford B. Hayes], we can imagine Congress finding itself confronted with competing electoral certificates at its joint session on January 6, 2021.

And what do we do if Trump wont leave? Constitutional scholar Joshua Geltzer recently wrote an article for The Intercept in which he said, "There is no reason to believe Trump will go quietly if he is defeated. There is every reason, however, to believe he and his allies will incite hysteria and even violence. Those who assume otherwise havent been paying attention.

But, as he told Mehdi Hasan on his show Deconstructed, the country should be protected by the rule of law. The Constitution is clear that on January 20, the term of a current president ends, Geltzer said. "And its also clear that if there isnt someone whose votes have been certified by Congress as the new president, then the line of succession kicks in.

And if Trump's term legally comes to an end without a certified result, and Pence's along with it, then who would be next in that line of succession? Well folks, it would be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Talk about perfect irony.

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What Happens If Donald Trump Actually Refuses to Accept the Election Results? - Vogue

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, crashed onto the political scene in 2015 after years of speculation about a run for the highest office in the land. The tough-talking New York real estate mogul and reality TV star obliterated the field of Republican challengers in the primary, upended what was projected to be a relatively comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton and as an outsider relished overturning the norms of presidential politics at virtually every turn (to praise and much criticism).

Trump garnered an unflinchingly loyal base of supporters with his appeal to the "forgotten" (largely the white working class) or "deplorables" and massive Make America Great Again rallies, eschewing political correctness, taking aim at his enemies and unapologetically saying he would put America first -- a marked contrast to the political establishment on both sides of the aisle. With former Indiana governor Mike Pence at his side -- an unflinching ally throughout his term -- Trump secured the Evangelical Christian voting bloc, despite myriad controversies that might have made him less appealing to that group.

Trump's approach created instant fame and controversy, with critics saying he benefitted by stoking racial and ethnic fears, but the booming economy and stock market buoyed him among supporters, and even some detractors.

Trump becomes the first president to be his party's nominee after being impeached and spent his entire presidency fending off accusations of impropriety. First, there was the Mueller investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia in 2016, which was not substantiated, but investigators did find evidence of obstruction of justice. Later, Trump was accused of asking Ukraine to help him get dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The second led to his impeachment in 2019, although he was later acquitted by the Republican-led Senate on slim margins and remained in office.

Trump's reelection prospects have been flipped upside down as the country faces three national crises that have shaped the 2020 election, including a still-raging coronavirus pandemic, the devastating economic fallout from the pandemic and widespread protests calling for racial justice. The pandemic remains a thorny issue for the president, with most Americans throughout the year disapproving of his handling of the virus.

Name: Donald John Trump

Party: Republican

Date of birth: June 14, 1946

Age: 74

Hometown: Queens, New York

Family: Married to Melania Trump, father to Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump and Barron Trump. Previously was married to Ivana Zelnkov & Marla Maples.

Education: After graduating from the New York Military Academy, Trump attended college for two years at Fordham University in the Bronx before transferring to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, which then had one of the only real estate programs in American academia. He graduated in 1968 with a bachelor of science degree in economics.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a ceremony at the Flight 93 National Memorial commemorating the 19th anniversary of the crash of Flight 93 and the September 11th terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2020, in Shanksville, Pa.

What he used to do: Trump joined his father, Fred, in the New York real estate and development world after college and worked in the field for decades, serving as the chairman and president of the Trump Organization from 1971 until he became president. In recent years, he gained fame as a reality TV star, portraying a larger-than-life version of himself.

Key life/career moments:

Trump burst onto the New York social scene in the 1980s with his opulent lifestyle, hard-charging TV-ready persona and tabloid-ready personal life, but he reached mainstream stardom thanks to the success of his 2004 hit reality TV show "The Apprentice," which was later reimagined as "The Celebrity Apprentice." Trump's TV stardom not only garnered him fame, but fortune as well.

Controversy has followed Trump throughout his professional and personal life.

Shortly after joining his family's New York City real estate business, the Justice Department filed a housing discrimination suit against Donald Trump, his father and their real estate management corporation in 1973. The suit against the Trump management corporation alleged "discriminating against black persons in the operation of their buildings," according to the DOJ. In spite of Trump's battle to have the suit dismissed, his legal team reached an agreement with the government in June 1975 that admitted no "violation of the prohibition against discrimination."

Trump's legacy in business, in part, centers around his ability to market his own name. As he moved from being strictly a real estate developer into a reality television star, he feverishly worked to turn his name into a brand. He licensed Trump products including steaks, water, vodka, menswear and more. He also launched Trump University, a now-defunct for-profit series of courses about real estate and entrepreneurship that also pushed people to buy Trump's books. In 2018, a federal judge in the Southern District of California finalized a $25 million settlement to be paid to Trump University attendees after they alleged fraud.

Trump University claimed its courses would teach attendees Trump's secrets to success in real estate, but the plaintiffs accused the for-profit school of false advertising. Trump University agreed to settle the claims for $21 million, plus another $4 million for the New York Attorney General's office within weeks of Trump becoming president.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump stand with Mike Pence and his wife Karen Pence during the Republican National Convention at Fort McHenry National Monument on Aug. 26, 2020, in Baltimore.

Trump, who has been asked about his political ambitions since the '80s, emerged on the political scene in the early 2010s by promulgating and becoming the face of the discredited "birther" movement, which pushed a conspiracy theory over the veracity of former President Barack Obama's birth certificate. And despite Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate in April 2011, Trump continued to call for the release of additional personal documents, offering Obama a check for $5 million to the charity of his choice in return for the release of his college transcripts and passport records.

Trump only conceded that Obama was born in the U.S. in September 2016.

At least 18, women have come forward accusing Trump of varying degrees of inappropriate behavior, including allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault, all but one before or during his bid for the White House. The president has repeatedly denied all the accusations. Earlier this month, Amy Dorris, a former model, claimed that Trump forcibly kissed and groped her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997. Legal advisor to the Trump campaign Jenna Ellis called the most recent allegation false and said "this is just another pathetic attempt to attack President Trump right before the election."

Trump became the first U.S. president to step inside North Korea in June 2019 and he was greeted in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) by the country's leader, Kim Jong Un. Prior to that historic moment, he'd held two summits with Kim, first in Singapore and then in Vietnam. However, after months of stalled nuclear negotiations and rhetoric returning to hostile levels, North Korea promised to deliver a "Christmas gift" to the U.S. -- a warning that had American and South Korean officials on high alert for a potential long-range missile test at the end of 2019. Such a test would have represented a step back in Trump's diplomatic efforts to end the rouge nation's nuclear weapons program. Nothing appears to have come of that warning. The president has expressed an openness to a third summit, but talks appear to be dead after working-level negotiators met once in October 2019 and were deadlocked. Trump continues to tout his relationship with Kim and tell his supporters, as recently as September, "we were supposed to be at war with them."

The president appointed two conservative judges to the Supreme Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020, he has made a third nomination -- federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett -- and is working with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to try to approve his nominee before Election Day.

Where he stands on some of the issues:

While he was elected with no political experience, the American people now have his four years in office to weigh.

Trump ran and was elected in 2016 on a far-right agenda, especially pertaining to immigration, calling for not only a wall to be built on the southern border, but also a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States. He entertained the idea of legalizing undocumented youth who are covered under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but the plan was scrapped and his administration has since sought to end their protections.

Last month, the Trump administration announced it had completed 300 miles of barriers along the southern border. Most of the barrier work has involved renovating and replacing smaller fencing and outdated designs. The president has repeatedly pledged to construct 450 miles by the end of 2020. But so far, fewer than 12 miles of barriers have been built where none previously existed, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Officials with Customs and Border Protection have praised the replacement projects while activists in border communities continue to decry the lasting environmental impacts of construction. Trump's hard-line approach to immigration has been consistent with how he campaigned. The president sparked outrage in the summer of 2017 after his administration launched a "zero-tolerance" policy which led to the separation of thousands of migrant families. The president worked to dramatically cut down on the number of refugees taken in by the U.S., signing off on a limit to no more than 18,000 in the fiscal year 2020.

Vice President Mike Pence is joined onstage by President Donald Trump after delivering his acceptance speech during an event of the 2020 Republican National Convention held at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Aug. 26, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The coronavirus pandemic has brought into question the president's ability to handle a crisis of this proportion. He named Vice President Mike Pence the head of the coronavirus task force and the president is campaigning on the job that he and his administration have done -- from their initial response to the ongoing containment efforts. Even as the U.S. surpassed the grim milestone of 200,000 reported deaths related to COVID-19, he continued to minimize the severity of the pandemic.

Months after reportedly admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that he was intentionally "playing it down" in order to avoid "panic," Trump has bucked public health experts' warnings about the virus at an increasing clip, repeating false and misleading statements about the pandemic and holding crowded campaign rallies with many in attendance not wearing masks. He gave himself an "A+" for handling the virus and said his administration did a "phenomenal job." Trump often repeats that had he not placed travel restrictions on China early on that there would have been upwards of 2 million deaths.

Trump in 2016 promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States and get rid of the North American Free Trade Agreement. While he did replace NAFTA with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USCMA), the economy, considered one of Trump's strongest selling points, has been in a downward spiral since the coronavirus pandemic forced broad lockdowns. U.S. employers added 1.4 million jobs in August and the unemployment rate fell to 8.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its latest employment report earlier this month, but the unemployment rate still isn't anywhere near pre-pandemic levels. In February, the unemployment rate was 3.5%. The unemployment rate is now lower than 10%, the high seen during the Great Recession, for the first time since the pandemic started.

The president is campaigning on a message of "law and order" amid nationwide protests prompted by incidents including the death of George Floyd while in police custody and the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer. The president said in Atlanta this month that "our nation has grieved for the tragic deaths," adding, "but we can never allow mob rule. To have safety, to have prosperity, to have everything that you want to have we must always ensure the rule of law."

The president however has largely avoided talking about the racial injustices which are at the root of these issues and why many are protesting across the country. He also has stoked racial fears by suggesting that Democrats will "destroy" the suburbs by allowing crime to flourish and low-income housing.

He has also flexed his muscle by using federal agents or offering to send them into cities to quell protests. In Portland, Oregon, for example, federal agents from Customs and Border Protection were deployed to a federal courthouse, along with the Federal Protective Service, where people have been protesting police violence. Amid unrest and public outcry over clashes between individuals and law enforcement, the governor announced a "phased withdrawal" of federal officers at the end of July. Earlier this summer, peaceful protesters were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square, near the White House, before the president walked over to St. John's Church to take photos while holding a Bible.

Fundraising:

Trump's reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee and their two joint fundraising vehicles have touted a prolific fundraising prowess throughout the 2020 election cycle, together amassing a whopping $1.3 billion just from January 2019 through the end of August this year. They have already surpassed the $1 billion goal they had set for the election cycle.

Much of that fundraising advantage has disappeared in recent months, however, as Team Trump burned through more than $800 million of that through the end of July and was outraised by the Biden campaign and the Democrats by more than $150 million during the month of August. Last month, Trump brought in just $210 million compared to Biden's $364 million record fundraising.

Neither of the campaigns released their cash on hand by the end of August, but this potentially puts Trump's war chest lighter than Biden's as they enter the last two months of the election cycle, as the two campaigns had roughly the same amount of cash on hand going into August.

Trump still does have support from political action committees, including the recently organized Preserve America, which is backed by GOP megadonors.

What you might not know about him:

Trump is the first billionaire U.S. president, with a net worth estimated at $2.5 billion as of September, according to Forbes.

He is the first president to be his party's nominee after being impeached by the House of Representatives. A sharply divided Senate acquitted Trump on both articles of impeachment, with Sen. Mitt Romney as the only Republican to break ranks and become the first senator ever to cast a guilty vote for a president from his own party.

Trump's family is not entirely new to the realm of politics: His older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, served as a federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. She was appointed on Sept. 22, 1999 by President Bill Clinton and served until June 30, 2011. The siblings' relationship has been strained.

Earlier this summer, in audio shared with The Washington Post, Barry describes her brother as having "no principles," and alleged that "he doesn't read" and had someone take his college entrance exams on his behalf. "Every day its something else, who cares," Trump said in a tweet following the revelations from the tapes. Barry also did not attend the funeral service in August at the White House for their brother, Robert Trump. His niece, Mary Trump, also attacked his character roundly in a new book.

President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters after making a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 24, 2019.

During the 2000 presidential primaries, Trump made an effort to receive the nomination of the Reform Party. Joining the party on Oct. 25, 1999, Trump initially presented himself as an alternative to the front-runner, Pat Buchanan. Confident in his chances in winning both the primary and the general election, Trump entered the California primary, receiving 15,311 votes. He later withdrew his candidacy, expressing concerns over the state of the Reform Party.

He was also once a member of the Democratic Party and even donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats, including his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president. The president donated a total of $6,000 from contributions in 2011 and 2013 according to the FEC.

In an unprecedented move, he filed for reelection on the day of his inauguration in January 2017. Since then, Trump, working with the Republican National Committee, has amassed a more traditional and sophisticated reelection team than the successful effort that beat the odds in 2016.

ABC News' Justin Gomez, Quinn Owen, Soorin Kim, Terrance Smith, Conor Finnegan, Conor Kelly and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump: What you need to know about the Republican nominee for president - ABC News

The Gallup data -- taken from a poll in the field from September 14 to September 29 -- shows that 56% of Americans said they consider themselves "better off" today than they were four years ago. (Roughly one in three -- 32% -- said they were worse off.)

And as Trump notes, that number is higher than the past times that Gallup has asked the question. In December 2012, 45% said they were better off than four years prior. In October 2004, it was 47%. And, going all the way back to July 1984, that number was at 44%.

In an email touting the "are you better off" numbers, Trump spokesman Steve Guest said, "This is a direct result of President Trump's policies. The American people are resilient, and they know they have a fighter in President Trump at the White House who spends every day working for them."

But here's the thing that both Trump and his campaign seem to miss: It is an incredibly damning indictment of Trump personally that, in a country where a majority of the people believe they are better off than they were four years ago, the incumbent President is currently losing badly in his bid for a second term.

What the Gallup numbers suggest is that even though people feel better off than they were at this time in 2016 -- a somewhat remarkable finding given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic -- they don't ascribe that better feeling to Trump and his policies. Or even if they do give Trump credit for feeling "better off" -- usually a measure of economic stability, optimism and well-being -- there are other things they prioritize when it comes to choosing the next president.

(Important note: The Gallup poll was conducted before the first presidential debate -- and Trump's erratic performance. It was also in the field prior to Trump's diagnosis last week with Covid-19.)

The message voters are sending is pretty clear: Many of them just don't like Trump personally.

That should be extremely worrisome for the President and his team. A majority of people feel better about their own lives than they did four years ago. With any past president, that would be a near-guarantee of a second term. Voters who feel like their own lives -- typically judged by their economic successes (or failures) -- are getting better have little interest in changing out the president.

That's a very, very tough nut for Trump to crack -- even if he had two years to do it. But he doesn't have two years. He has 25 days. Essentially he has to figure out a way to get credit for voters' positive feelings about their personal status while also somehow convincing them to prioritize that feeling over their personal dislike for him and the way he conducts himself in office.

What that Gallup poll that Trump and his campaign have touted actually tells us is that if Trump had been, well, a whole lot less Trump-y, he might be in a strong position to win a second term. But because Trump is Trump, he has managed to separate out voters' positive feelings about their lives from their feelings about him. People feel good about their situations, and Trump doesn't benefit.

Rather than pumping up that poll as proof of his successes, Trump should see the Gallup numbers for what they actually are: A blaring warning sign that he is headed toward a loss on November 3.

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That Gallup poll doesn't say what Donald Trump thinks it does - CNN