Donald Trump, 1998 HARDtalk

Rich, ruthless, and famous: My guest is a new institution,

known for the buildings he has built, and the wives

You don't want to cross him, though, because he likes

And he's made it a rule that no-one pushes him around -

So how did he lose all his money and then get it back again?

Donald Trump, a very warm welcome to the programme.

You say you can't make an omelette without breaking

That sounds like a very destructive business

I'm not sure I have actually used those words.

Generally, you had to shake things up pretty much in order to do

And they have shaken things up, and I've had the best business use

We hear a lot about its the roughest, toughest,

the most ruthless business in the world.

I think the business tends to be tougher than in other places,

The real estate business in New York is an amazing business.

And any time you have a great business, you always have

Do you have to be a killer in business?

I think you have to be smart in business.

I don't think you have to be a killer, I think you have

That many have to have eyes in the back of your head,

always looking to is going to get you, put

One of the things I say in the book,

very strongly, is you have to be paranoid.

And the book is selling so well, well, and so people believe

But there is a certain advantage to having a certain degree

You watch what is happening behind your back.

And I think that is probably very true in business.

If you are paranoid, how much enjoyment is in that?

How much can you actually sit back and say look what I've done,

I think that there is great enjoyment.

I think that paranoia cannot be carried to a large shattering crisis

People are out there and they are looking and looking

But I think success brings great enjoyment.

Most of my business is the building of things.

I get great pride that of Trump Tower per which is on 57th

5th Ave in New York, or the hotel in Central

I get a great sense of artistic enjoyment at those

What are the business methods in the city?

You have been in New York your whole life.

I don't think that New York is that much different

What I do think is there is a greater energy New York.

There is a great verve, or to drive, maybe New York,

And really, than any other place I have seen.

But I don't think the business itself is much

different in New York than anywhere else.

Greed, corruption, I mean, you say, it is as though a line in the book,

Well, I don't think that greed is good.

As you know, they did that famous film with Michael Douglas,

Wolf of Wall Street, where greed is good.

I think you have to enjoy what you are doing.

If you enjoy what you're doing, it will be

If you don't enjoy what you are doing, it is almost never

The richer you get, I suppose, the bigger the target that

I think that rich men, I guess, are always targets.

I think there is a level of celebrity that my team that has

become so prodigious that makes me an even bigger target.

So was bothers me, but there is really not

Well, it has just become tough to go out.

It's hard to be discreet restaurant, in a sense, because it is always

It didn't used to be that is a symbol of success,

It is, but it is not a good symptom, necessarily.

Because you go out and you would have dinner with a group

of people are struck, the lender being a big event

and there are people waiting at the entrance for you.

It is just a very tough way to live a life, I find.

You talk in book about getting even, the importance of getting even.

If somebody has hurt you, if somebody has got out of their way

to hurt you, if you have the opportunity, it is certainly go

I've had more criticism about that 17 in than any other statement.

If you did turn the other cheek, as the clergy have presumably

suggested to you, what would that do to your reputation in business

I don't know what it would do to my reputation.

I just believe in instinctively turning the other

So it isn't virtue, if they want to do a number on you,

I really believe that you should just do a number on them,

Well, there were people that are really helped in business

when things were very good in the 1980s, and in my company

And they did not lift a finger to help me when I needed it.

And there were a couple of them that could have very easily held me.

Now I have the opportunity to do a number on those people,

and I will tell you, and having a lot of fun

Who were the movers and shakers in this society?

We get the impression in New York that power is in the hands of a few

very, very rich people, yourself included.

Is that still the weight business is conducted in the city?

I think New York is very much run politically.

We have a mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who has done an incredible

And just been re-elected by a huge margin.

I think it is the largest margin ever.

And so it starts off with the Mayor, the leadership,

We have other people within the business

community, obviously, that are very important,

But the city has just become very, very hot.

And I think it is due to Rudy, and people in business,

It is just a place where everyone wants to be.

And I happen to be the biggest developer

in New my company now has do much better than it ever did

Well, I think one thing is perseverance.

When things were tough at the beginning of the 90s,

for me and every one else, the problem with

me was I was getting all the publicity.

I called it the Great Depression in the early 90s,

And it was real estate in retailing and airlines,

and various other businesses, they were in a total depression.

And I survived, and most people did not survive.

A lot of my friends, a lot of good people and that people

And you probably never will hear from them again.

But you know, I survived to a point where the

company is much bigger now than it ever was,

and much stronger, financially, then it ever was.

But in the early 90s, you face the possibility

In fact, on paper, you had lost that much of it in.

-- In fact, on paper, you had lost pretty much everything.

I faced the possibility of losing everything.

I focused my mental energies and all of my energy.

I think one of the reasons why a really

succeeded and bigger than even in the 80s is the fact that,

It is a long would come to think of it.

It is the world changed, the economy change,

and there was a survival tactic until a certain year.

And in 1995, things started changing.

To start off with, I really played myself a little bit,

because I've always been able to pick markets.

And I really was not focused was into the 80s.

And it is no different from you if you do

15 great interviews, and in the 60s you can take

I put my guard backup and put my defences and offences

more than I ever did in the 80s, and worked harder than I did

And actually became much more successful.

You had to believe in your own abilities.

Was there time where you thought "I really

Because I owed billions and billions of dollars.

$975 million or so was personally guaranteed.

When you are that deep in debt, you are mired in debt,

and you are that deep in debt, that is a pretty rough situation

And the vultures circling around you?

You had plenty of bad people circling.

And some good people, friendly, that wanted to get paid.

But it was just, it was hunker down time, as they say

You learn some lessons about the people

who were your friends and those who would your friends?

I read once that I would love to sort of have a bad

period, financially, just to see who my friends would be,

I will never write again, because it is not fun.

It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I have done that period, and in that time, I learnt a lot.

They also learned that there was a very good

friends out there for me, and then people who did not help.

Tell me about the women in your life, because

there seems a sense in which, you say in the book,

you have measured the women by your mother.

I don't measure women by my mother, but they have a woman and my mother

And I've been married to very nice women, but it just didn't work out.

And I think part of that, one of the negatives

to success is that there are lots of obstacles thrown

in your way in terms of relationship.

I'm thinking about these great buildings all over,

the largest job ever approved by the New

York city planning commission in the west side.

There is a lot of things that I am doing a building.

And think about that, maybe, as opposed to a relationship.

I must a netted a positive way, but almost

Because it is very negative and has a relationship.

And success may be great in terms of living and

lifestyle and beautiful homes and of this stuff that doesn't mean

very but success is not necessarily very

Women are far stronger than men, you say.

I believe that women are actually stronger

And actually say that they are not so much stronger, but I think

"Their sex drive makes us look like babies."

I think the woman's sex drive is as much greater than a man's.

I have been witness to it, and perhaps you have,

But sex drive of women is extraordinary.

And they like to betray themselves as the weaker sex,

I think that probably, they are certainly the more

And even a business, I have found that some women

I say this was scorn or anything else.

But I think the women, in many cases, are more

You've seen that sex drive first hand.

You talk about the woman of great social pedigree and the dinner party

Well, I've had a lot of circumstances where a woman's

sexual drive has turned out to be just

And not necessarily anticipated by me.

There really was a specific dinner, though, wasn't there?

I would rather let the book speak to it, because to be honest,

it is was embarrassing talking about it in an interview.

Because it really is mostly a business book.

But I think that women have a lot to do with

They've a lot to do the effect on your life and how

She embarrassed you, though, this woman.

Your didn't give the name in the book...

Somebody else wrote a book and named everyone.

It was their feet under the table, was that it?

There are so many instances like this.

And I do talk about them in the book.

It is not what the book is all about.

But the book is about success, and frankly,

women are so influential, on you, at the world,

and the world around you, they have devoted a lot of to women

You say that women have one of the "greatest acts" in the world.

The smart ones very feminine and needy, but inside,

It sounds as though you almost have a sort of love hate

I have mostly a love relationship with

women, because they totally admire and respect and love women.

I feel that there is a - the ones who

go out and do it without waiting the banner of women's liberation.

And if you look at the really successful

women, those are the ones that are not had to wait that big banner.

Two wives, that you have had, Ivana and Marla.

I have good relations relationships with both of them.

You were in an ongoing fight with one of them at the time

I mean, well, see, I would rather want to address the question

sometime later because at this moment, umm, I have a very good

I think I have a very good relationship with

Marla, but I will be able to tell you better later.

You stressed the importance of the prenuptial agreement,

even to use this vicious document, and people who signed a 50% more

likely to divorce than those who don't.

But yet you stressed that this is the

Prenuptial agreements are ugly, vicious,

terrible documents that you have to have.

I mean, it is, umm, if you are getting married,

and if you are a person of substance, man or a woman

of substance, you have to have a prenuptial agreement.

And the reason is the word certainty.

You need certainty over your business.

You can't be going on for ten years fighting over a divorce settlement.

You just have to have a prenuptial agreement.

And even if you do, you have had battles,

Even when you do, I mean, even when you

Well, prenuptials are pretty foolproof, but, they still fight.

And people who will still fight over prenuptials, I know people that have

prenuptial agreements they have given, they are legion.

But, umm, you know, the prenuptials are very

It's always hard to go up to somebody and say,

look, I love you very much, but if and when we

get divorced, this is what you're getting.

So, you know, would you agree to that?

There's nothing nice about a prenuptial

But from a practical standpoint, and living in this world,

and living through a very difficult court system,

and everything else, I think it's absolutely necessary

And at some point I actually devote a chapter in the book

So, you think that if you can sort out

the finances, that somehow the relationship will take

I think that finances and relationships are very,

I think that finances, that great success

often leads to bad relationships are unfortunately.

I think that the reason somebody becomes successful

is they who focuses on success, his or her success, not necessarily

But, I think that there are times when both

Getting the right partner is a very important

Having the right partner can be a very beautiful

thing in life, if you are lucky enough to do that.

It is certainly not number one in my mind.

I am having a lot of fun doing what I am doing.

I think there is nothing like having a good

I think having a great relationship is more important than deals

and more important than everything else.

I find that business comes very easily when you

I have just found that historically it's

Most people would say it's just the opposite,

I think that a relationship is based on so many

different things that are adverse to business.

And I think that having that great relationship does

not necessarily go with having a good business.

Most important to you seems to be your children,

Yeah, I have great children and they are very important to me.

That is one of the good things that came out of the relationship.

And your parents, I used to very close to them?

And your parents, are still very close to them?

I have a great relationship with them.

My father was a builder in Brooklyn in Queens.

And I learned a lot just sitting on his knee,

you know, listening to him from the time I grew up.

And I just learned a lot about negotiating

and I learned a lot about building, I learned a lot about business.

And while he was at a different level in terms of the kinds

of things he did, he still built, and he built, you know,

He built some jobs out in Brooklyen, Queens, and in the boroughs

of New York, for low and moderate income

And, you know, he did a really good job at what he did.

Some of the most important people in the world

There was a dinner you went out with Michael Jackson

Tell me about that, because he seemed almost lost

when you took him out to a restaurant.

What do you remember about that evening?

Michael Jackson was literally just...

But he was literally going to a restaurant.

We went to Le Cirque, the great Le Cirque, with Sirio.

And Michael was sitting at the table and he just sort of...

It was like he was never at a restaurant.

He did not know about manners, he did not know about things.

And I said to him, when was the last you

And I believe that was true, because he was so not at ease

And saying that he was just not somebody was exposed to this

What I really thought was interesting was there are many

great celebrities at that restaurant.

People were asking him for his autograph.

That, to me, was the funniest thing about the evening.

And Frank Sinatra you fell out with at some point.

I said so many things about Frank Sinatra

He was rough and tough at the table with somebody,

not me, but somebody at the table, namely his wife.

I was just amazed at how bad this particular incident was.

And then I realised, you go outside and everyone

is pulling at his coat strings trying to get his autograph,

trying to break him down one way or the other.

It really was pretty tough from all of those

And as I mellowed, coming into my third book, I said,

you know, I feel badly about writing about him.

And I did the same thing with Malcolm Forbes.

When I was having trouble with Forbes Magazine,

I did not feel good about Malcolm Forbes.

Then I realised he was just doing his thing just trying to do

the right thing, and I apologised to Malcolm

Forbes, because he was just really doing his thing.

And New York City has lost a great guy and a great

The impression from what you write is that you haven't had

You haven't enjoyed relations with the press, you think the press

I think a lot of the press is dishonest, I think a lot of the

press is really, really dishonest. Most people think I get great

publicity. I happen to think I get terrible publicity. Do you mind what

people say about you? I used to mind much more. The one thing I have

learned is that it is a one-week phenomenon. Does not matter. Usually

at the end of a week or even a it is gone. Once you get that into your

head you can live with it. The lessons you have learned over your

they? It is very, very focused. I they? It is very, very focused. I

think I help people, I like people, I have a good relationship with the

ball, I have a lot of good relationships with people in

business and generally. -- people. Do people try to lean on you?

Everyone does. I don't mind being leaned on if it is to help somebody.

I really enjoy helping people at high levels and at low levels and I

feel that is very important to give to charity. I give a lot of money to

charity, I try to give as much as I can. But, you know, there are times

when you just have to say that is enough, that is all I can do. People

might look at you and think yourselves, I wonder what it is like

to have all of that money. Donald Trump, what is it like to have all

of that money? Well, again, money does not buy happiness ended it does

not buy lots of other things, but it certainly makes life easier, and it

lets me create what I want to do artistically. Because in a certain

sense I am an artist. I built the greatest buildings in the world and

in the biggest developer in New York City and I love what I am doing and

I have put up great things. And having money and having the kind of

access to money that I have allows me to do what I like to do best. If

someone said I want to be Donald Trump, what would you say? I would

say good luck. Thank you for talking to us. Thank you.