Donald Trump Jr: Six fast facts about the President's eldest son

The First Family of the United States is a large and multifaceted machine. President Donald Trump has moulded his next of kin into a political entourage, with his daughter Ivanka taking an official role in the White House and appearing close to him at meetings with international leaders.

However, Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr - who has found himself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently - has largely been put to use outside the political sphere. The 39-year-old and his brother, Eric, have been given the reins of the Trump Organization, their father's multibillion-dollar enterprise.

The move stirred considerable controversy among the media and political worlds, with questions raised about potential conflicts of interest. More recently, Donald Jr has been back in the headlines for meeting a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

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So what is there to know about Donald Jr? Here are five quick facts:

He speaks Czech

Born in 1977 Manhattan, Donald Jr is one of three children from Trump's first marriage to Ivana. He was 12 when his parents separated.

After growing up with a Czech mother and spending six months of each year with his maternal grandparents, including many summers in Prague, Donald Jr learned to speak Czech fluently but is apparently coy about his language skills, rarely speaking the language public. However, at least that's better than Ivanka's confession in 2010:

He followed in his father's footsteps

Not only did Donald Jr wind up at the head of the Trump Organization, taking his father's place, but he also went to the same university as his pop - the Wharton School of Business, which is part of the prestigious Ivy League school University of Pennsylvania. He left with a BSc in Economics.

He became teetotal after college

Donald Jr "was known as a partier and drinker in college", says the Houston Chronicle, but he gave up the drinking lifestyle after graduating in 2001.

"I used to drink a lot and party pretty hard and it wasn't something that I was particularly good at," he told New York Magazine in 2003.

"I mean, I was good at it, but I couldn't do it in moderation. About two years ago, I quit drinking entirely. I have too much of an opportunity to make something of myself, be successful in my own right. Why blow it?"

He has five children

He married model Vanessa Haydon in 2005 and the couple have five children: Kai, nine; Donald III, eight; Tristan, five; Spencer, four, and two-year-old Chloe Sophia. Elder daughter Kai is just a year younger than Donald Jr's half-brother, Barron.

He is a keen hunter

Donald Jr and Eric are both keen hunters and have come under fire for their activities in the past.

In 2012, photos surfaced online of Donald Jr posing next to what appeared to be an elephant he had killed in Zimbabwe, with the businessman holding a knife in one hand and the animal's severed tail in the other. The photo's authenticity was verified and the Trump brothers received considerable criticism online.

The two men said they were not hunting illegally or targeting endangered animals and responded to accusations that their hunting was "wasteful and disgusting":

He hasn't always had the easiest relationship with his dad

Like many father-son relationships, Donald and Donald Jr have had their rough patches. While growing up, Donald Jr said his father would always take his calls, even if the businessman was negotiating a deal with a chief executive to a large corporation. However, when he turned 12, his parents divorced. According to Donald Jr, he stopped talking to his father for at least a year when his parents first separated and later tried to distance himself from his father's name professionally and well as privately.

"When I was younger, there were times when you didn't want to have to deal with everyone making those assumptions, however ignorant they may be," he told Barbara Walters on ABC's 2020 in 2004. "I'd introduce myself as just Don, or something like that, to avoid the last name at all costs."

Nevertheless, as a young man, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.