Donald Trump may be serving his second term as the president of the United States, but did you know his father, Fred Trump Sr., sent the future president away to a military academy at the age of 13? According to The List, Trump’s father reportedly made the call to ship off his son to a boarding school due to the latter’s alleged misbehavior.
However, the major shift in the environment made matters worse for Trump. Per PBS, the president told biographer Timothy O’Brien that “when he arrived at the military academy, for the first time in his life, someone slapped him in the face when he got out of line.” This violent exchange prompted Trump to build an aggressive persona during his school days.
Insiders alleged that the tendency to choose violence, abuse of power, and aggression towards classmates was so strongly imbibed in a teenage Trump’s mind that even the correctional attempts of the New York Military Academy failed to break through his demeanor.
Fun fact: On October 12, 1963, the New York Military Academy drill team participated in the Columbus Day Parade, led by commanding officer Donald Trump. The future president was 17 years old: pic.twitter.com/3mqmCBK2Hz
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) October 13, 2025
“Donald Trump yelled at his classmates. He pushed them around,” another biographer, Marc Fisher, said of the former The Apprentice host’s behavior in school. Trump’s former classmate echoed a similar sentiment, saying, “All of us were part of this culture of you beat on kids when they didn’t do the right thing (sic).”
Even the president’s niece, Mary Trump, confirmed the claims in her 2020 book, “Too Much and Never Enough.” According to Newsweek, she wrote, “Finally, by 1959, Donald’s misbehavior — fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers — had gone too far.”
Following his graduation from the military school, Trump enrolled in prestigious institutions to pursue higher education. He first joined Fordham before transferring to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. However, professors at the established university were reportedly left disappointed with Trump’s behavior.
9. Donald Trump graduated from the New York Military Academy in May 1964. That fall, he enrolled at Fordham University, but stayed just two years before heading to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/dkS3BbGHxd
— Earth_Wanderer (@earth_tracker) January 21, 2025
According to Philadelphia Magazine, one of the president’s former Wharton professors allegedly said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest student I ever had!” The alleged statement does not appear shocking when considering Mary Trump’s revelations about her uncle’s time at the Ivy League college.
According to The Guardian, in her 2020 memoir, Mary wrote, “Donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of the class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted.” She continued, “To hedge his bets, he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him.”
According to another report by The Washington Post, Mary also claimed that she did Donald Trump’s homework to help him get enrolled in college. As the president continues to battle controversies in the present day, the ghosts of his past further contribute to shape public perceptions of him.
