Donald Trump: 'Putting a Wife to Work Is a Very Dangerous Thing' [FULL 1994 INTERVIEW]

[0:00] say you love every waking moment i like the reputation of a solid married man that's what [0:14] i'd like for me then say you share with me one love one lifetime i feel like i've known him [0:23] for millions of years be it painful be it pleasant it's just like we're bonded we're really bonded [0:31] that's all i love you they are the trumps of new york and palm beach living the glamorous life as [0:43] if the 80s never ended at mar-a-lago their historic villa by the sea marla and the donald married at [0:51] last but not without some drama i think it was a little bit surprising we really anticipated getting [0:57] married and having a baby not having a baby and getting married so why didn't you marry her right [1:00] away when you found it she was pregnant why did you indecision indecision really indecision i was [1:04] like you're destroying my reputation again here you know it's already happened once and just loving you [1:09] look what happened just because i loved you and now you know not to be married before you have the baby [1:16] oh my god but in terms of the personal life uh it's to me it's a more difficult decision [1:23] you know it's it's in many respects a much bigger decision that's an irrevocable deal well it really [1:27] is in theory it's an irrevocable deal and so tiffany ariana became a trump two months before [1:34] her mother signed on the dotted line not the marriage license the prenuptial agreement everyone [1:43] around donald was like you've got to get a prenuptial now donald knew how i felt about it [1:47] which was that please don't talk to me about it i've stuck by you through everything don't even offend me [1:53] but you know you know you know i love you i hate the concept of a prenuptial agreement because it [1:58] basically says if and when you get divorced this is what you're going to get and there's something [2:03] very bad about that but i think it's a modern day necessity i didn't like the way this system works [2:13] i mean i really felt that it was very offensive to both of us and he'd say you know you're right [2:18] but what am i supposed to do marla hates it doesn't want to sign it ultimately she has to sign it [2:24] just from my standpoint she has to sign it so i said whatever you need for your bankers for [2:30] for your associates i'll sign that let's just not call it a prenuptial and let's not put a dollar [2:34] amount on what happens once we're divorced once we're divorced right i mean that's the way you [2:38] start thinking in the end they made a deal reports had her asking for 25 million but he negotiated her [2:47] down to a mere million dollars it looks a little um cheap yeah it looks cheap yeah you mean the amount [2:55] of money well the amount of money that's so bad somebody gets married and it doesn't work out you [2:59] get a million bucks i mean you know you shouldn't be able to pay a price and be able to walk away [3:03] you make a commitment between yourselves and god and and you should not be able to say write a little [3:08] check see you later it's it's a lousy thing i hate the concept but it's totally necessary and i think a [3:14] million dollars is a lot of money no you don't no i don't actually but the fact is that a million [3:21] dollars for somebody coming into a marriage if something didn't and i'm not i'm not talking [3:25] about anybody specifically but uh it's a lot of money for somebody the woman's been with you six [3:30] years she's been as you said incredibly loyal she you're finally gonna get married you have a child [3:36] give her the 25 million well i guess i look at everything like a deal i mean you know it's just [3:41] one of those things donald said to me and i believe he believes this summer everything is a deal [3:45] well everything's a deal we we have to work on separating his business from his personal [3:51] you know we both have to sometimes stop and say is this business or is this us because there is a [3:57] difference i built this empire and i did it by myself nobody did it for me not ivana not marla nobody [4:09] and i think that because somebody marries somebody that built something huge it doesn't necessarily mean [4:17] that just because they get a divorce that they should end up you know like the queen of sheba [4:24] or perhaps like ivana wife number one when trump walked away from their 13-year marriage it cost him [4:31] a total of 14 million dollars the bill came due not long after wife ivana confronted mistress marla [4:38] opreski in aspen that day in the restaurant when you saw those two women actually meeting each other [4:44] face to face how did you feel we were actually standing near the restaurant getting ready to put [4:51] skis on and i was standing there like an idiot and marla and ivana were here and there wasn't shouting [5:00] but you could obviously see there was some friction and a man who was standing right next to me who [5:06] weighed about 350 pounds and wasn't a very attractive guy said to me it could be worse donald i've been in [5:14] aspen for 20 years and i've never had a date and i'll never forget the statement and it sort of [5:19] lightened it up a little bit for me i'm saying you know i guess it could be worse do you think unless [5:24] the two had actually come face to face you would have confronted that situation well it's interesting [5:28] because it's possible that you know maybe it would still be going on i'm not sure truth be told [5:35] donald trump had lived a charmed life the model mogul of the 1980s i mean my life was so great [5:42] in so many ways the business was so great and the the um i mean even the concept i mean beautiful [5:49] girlfriend beautiful wife beautiful everything i mean life was just a ball of cherries there was [5:59] trump shuttle trump princess trump tower by 1989 he says his empire was worth five billion dollars and [6:07] he was well let him tell you i was at the highest of all pedestals the hottest in the country the [6:15] highest point everything i touched turned to gold immediately everything i did turn to gold and life [6:21] started getting boring and then one day the pedestal was knocked out from under me and it wasn't just [6:28] his marriage at the same time the trump empire began to collapse under the weight of the recession [6:34] the trump shuttle hemorrhaged atlantic city gamblers had no money to spend in trump's new [6:39] billion dollar casino and his heavily mortgage real estate holdings plummeted in value [6:45] midas had lost his touch it was an amazing period i i in many respects i used to say to people [6:52] someday i'd like to be poor just for a little while just to see who's going to remain loyal to me [6:59] there were specifically 24 or 25 people that i have earmarked who were very disloyal who shouldn't [7:08] have been disloyal and i think that's the thing that i learned more than anything else nancy was [7:13] loyalty because i'm like this great loyalty freak i i'm loyal to a point of of the absurd i stay with [7:20] people and it seems the man who could have been a contender may be one yet again after four years of [7:31] staving off bankers donald trump's casino business has come back and within months he'll sell shares [7:37] giving the public a chance to buy a piece of the donald why should the public pay to bail donald trump [7:43] out if in fact you do go public well nobody's bailing me out i bail myself out i think i've done a really [7:50] great job of getting out of trouble how much personal debt do you have now well i had billions of dollars [7:57] of debt uh five in excess of five billion i had 975 million dollars worth of personal debt and that's [8:07] down now to about 115 million and i'm going to pay that off very quickly in fact over the next very [8:13] short period of time do you think that wall street respects you yeah i think a lot of i think [8:18] wall street has a lot of respect call it what you like they are certainly courting him hey fellas [8:25] these two guys head up merrill lynch and by the way speaking about your last question they came [8:29] to florida to kiss my ass to get the work for merrill lynch you have no idea the pressure that's put on [8:36] me by everybody in the country literally i'm getting calls from everybody would i use this firm would i [8:41] use that firm everybody wall street has a lot of respect for trump i call a lot of analysts they said [8:46] we're receptive to donald trump because he usually ends up producing respect is another issue and maybe he [8:52] doesn't like the way i dress or something else but he likes the way i make money and you know the [8:57] analysts all like the way i make money trump says he has learned from his mistakes in business and in [9:03] love i think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing i mean we'll make we'll do an [9:10] educational program here okay if you're in business for yourself i really think it's a bad idea to put your [9:16] wife working for you i think it's a really bad idea i think that was the single greatest cause of [9:22] what happened to my marriage with ivana the trouble started he claims after he suggested [9:31] that ivana run the trump castle casino in atlantic city and you never thought of asking her to quit [9:36] when you saw it wasn't working well i'll give you an example i didn't think of it that way so you tend [9:41] not to think of it that way uh ivana would get angry at somebody over the telephone all of a sudden [9:49] who was at the casino and she'd start shouting and i'd say i don't want my wife shouting at [9:56] somebody like that i really don't want that and a softness disappeared there was a great softness [10:04] to ivana and she still has that softness but during this period of time she became an executive not a [10:11] wife well you now are married to a woman and you who would like to continue her career marla says she [10:17] does want to have a career there's a difference between having a career and working for me you have [10:23] said you don't want marla to work you actually said no yeah on the day of the wedding i think i'm [10:28] probably mixed i have days where i think it's great and then i have days where if i come home [10:34] and you know i don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist but when i come home and dinner's not [10:39] ready i'll go through the roof okay you know what's interesting donald you take these women these two [10:44] particular women in your life and you help them become very well known and then when they want to [10:50] act on that appeal you seem to get upset about it i create stars i love creating stars and to a [10:59] certain extent i've done that with ivana to a certain extent i've done that with marla and i like that [11:07] let me lead you from your solitude i mean i've really given a lot of women great opportunity [11:16] unfortunately after their star the fun is over for me it's like a creation process it's almost like [11:21] creating a building it's pretty sad love me that's all i love you