Eric Trump is an American businessman, born January 6, 1984, and the third child and second son of Donald Trump, the 47th U.S. President, and his first wife, Ivana Trump. He serves as the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, managing its global real estate portfolio alongside his brother Donald Jr. His role includes overseeing new project acquisitions, development, and construction, with a particular focus on expanding Trump Golf, growing the portfolio from three properties in 2006 to eighteen today, across locations like New York, Florida, Scotland, and the UAE. He also played a key role in launching Trump Hotels in 2006, which now includes eight luxury properties worldwide.
Eric was born in New York City, attended Trinity School, and later graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in finance and management in 2006, breaking from the family tradition of attending the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Trump Organization that same year and appeared as a boardroom judge on his father’s reality show The Apprentice from 2010 to 2015, featuring in 23 episodes. During his father’s first presidency (2017–2021), Eric and Donald Jr. took over the family business, though they faced criticism for continuing international deals despite pledging not to, with fact-checkers like PolitiFact debunking Eric’s claim that the family stopped such transactions.
In 2006, at age 23, Eric founded the Eric Trump Foundation to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, supporting initiatives like an intensive-care unit opened in 2015 and cancer research. However, the foundation has been controversial—Forbes reported that over $1.2 million of donations went to the Trump Organization for golf course usage, with experts questioning the expense justification. The New York State Attorney General’s Office investigated the foundation starting in 2017, with the inquiry ongoing as of December 2018. Eric claimed the foundation’s expense ratio was 12.6% and that the Trump Organization never profited, but these assertions have been disputed.
Eric married Lara Yunaska, a former television producer and politician, in 2014 at Mar-a-Lago. They have two children, Eric "Luke" (born 2017) and Carolina Dorothy (born 2019), and reside in Jupiter, Florida, after moving there in 2021. Eric has been a vocal defender of his father, serving as a key advisor and campaign surrogate during Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns. He’s also been linked to controversies, including criticism for big-game hunting in Zimbabwe in 2012 and defending waterboarding as a form of torture.
Recently, Eric has been involved in promoting new Trump Organization ventures, including a $1 billion Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai, announced in May 2025, alongside other projects in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.S. At the Token2049 cryptocurrency forum in Dubai, he gave an emotional speech advocating for crypto, reflecting his growing interest in the sector, though some on X have criticized him as a “nepo-baby” and questioned his expertise in this area. Despite his lower public profile compared to siblings Ivanka and Donald Jr., Eric remains a central figure in the Trump family’s business and political sphere.