Donald Trump, 1998 - BBC HARDtalk

rich ruthless and famous my guest is a New York institution known for the buildings he's built and the wives he's divorced you don't want to cross him though because he likes getting even and he's made it a rule that no one pushes him around ever so how did he lose all his money and then get it back again Donald Trump a very warm welcome to the program you say you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs that sounds like a very destructive business philosophy is it well I'm not sure that I've actually used those words but generally you have to shake things up pretty pretty much in order to do something of consequence and I have shaken things up and I've had the best business years of my life by far how rough is business in New York we hear a lot about it's the toughest the roughest the most ruthless business in the world is it well I think that business in New York tends to be tougher maybe than other places but I'm not so sure that's true the real estate business in New York is an amazing business it's a great business and anytime you have a great business you always have competition and you always have unfortunately the smart and the tough people coming into it 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 to be smart does that mean eyes in the back of your head always looking to see who's going to get you who's trying to pull one off a fast one on you well one of the things I say in the book and I say very strongly is you have to be paranoid and the book is selling so well and I guess people believe this but there is a certain advantage to having a certain degree of paranoia you watch you can be a little bit careful you watch what's happening behind your back and I think that's probably very true in business if you're paranoid how much enjoyment is there I mean how much times you have to actually sit back and say look what I've done this is great I think that there's great enjoyment I think that the paranoia cannot be carried to a life shattering crisis point but I think it's good to OH we know that people are out there and they're looking and they're looking to throw you off your throne but I think success brings great enjoyment and certainly it has for me is it the competition that fires you up is it the money what is it that gets you out of bed in the morning what is it that drives you here I really think it's the artistic or the aesthetic I love building great buildings in the case most of my business is the building of things and I agree I get great artistic pride out of a great building like Trump Tower which is on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York or Trump International Hotel and Tower my new building on Central Park West and I get a great sense of artistic enjoyment out of those buildings what do you think of business methods in this city I mean you've been a New Yorker all your life you've lived here what do you think of the way people conduct business in the city well I don't think that New York is that much different from other places what I do think is that there's a greater energy in New York there's a greater Verve or a greater Drive maybe in New York than most other places and really than any other place I've seen but I don't think that business itself is much different in New York than it would be anywhere else greed corruption I mean you say it's a throwaway line in the book greed is good well I don't think green is good and as you know they did the famous Earlham where with Michael Douglas Wall Street where greed is good but that is not the case I mean I think greed is bad I think that you have to enjoy what you're doing if you enjoy what you're doing it'll be successful generally if you don't enjoy what you're doing it's almost never going to be successful rich men are always targets the richer you get I suppose the bigger the target that you present to people how much does that worry you well I think that rich men I guess are always targets rich people are always targets and I think that there's a level of celebrity that I've attained which has become so ridiculous now that it makes me an even bigger target so it always bothers me but there's really not much I can do about it I mean like ridiculous in what way every level well it's it's just become very tough to go out it's very tough to do things it's very tough to just even go to a restaurant in a sense because it's always shaking hands and signing autographs and things and you know it didn't used to be that way that's a symbol of success is it it is but it was different success it's not necessarily a good symbol it's really it causes lots of problems I mean you you go out and you want to have dinner at a restaurant with a group of people and it ends up being a big event and you have people waiting at the entrance to the it's just a very tough way to lead a life I find you talk in your book about getting even the importance of getting even is revenge sweet I believe strongly in getting even if somebody has hurt you if somebody's gone out of their way to hurt you I think that if you have the opportunity you should certainly go out of your way to do a number of them and I have had more criticism about that one statement in my book than any other statement the clergy is called the ministers the priests the rabbis they've all said what a terrible thing to say that's against our teachings I just believe it I believe in an eye for an eye if you did turn the other cheek as the clergy are presumably suggesting to you what would that do to your reputation in business circles here in New York - well I don't know what it would do to my reputation I just don't believe instinctively and turning the other cheek if somebody was out to hurt you if somebody was out to do a number on you I really believe that you should just do a number on them if you get the chance can you give me an example well there were people that I really helped in business when things were very good in the 1980s and when my company was going good 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 helped me now I have the opportunity to do a number of those people and I will tell you I'm having a lot of fun with the opportunity who are the movers and shakers in the society we get the impression in New York the Paris in the hands of a few very very rich people yourself included decisions in smoke-filled rooms is that still the way business is conducted in this city well I think New York is very much run politically I think we have a mayor that's named Rudy Giuliani who's done an incredible job in New York I just got really and just got reelected huge margin I guess the largest margin ever he has been an incredible marriage than an unbelievable job and he just been great and he so it's sort of it starts off with the mayor the leadership and the politicians we have other people within the business community obviously that are very important and there are a lot of them but the city has just become very very hot and I think it's due to Rudy and lots of people in business that have done a very good job when you say hearted more focused it's really become focused it's just a place where everyone wants to be people want to come to New York they love the city they want to be here they want the action you know New York has action New York is unbelievable action and everyone wants to be here and I happen to be the biggest developer in New York my company now is doing much better than it ever did in the 1980s I mean what do you attribute that to well I think one thing is perseverance I mean when things were tough at the beginning of the 90s for me and everyone else the problem with me is I was getting all the publicity a Great Depression you call it I call it I call it the Great Depression of the early 90s because we were really in a real estate depression and it was real estate and retailing and Airlines and various other businesses they were in a total depression they weren't in a recession and I survived most people didn't survive I mean a lot of my friends a lot of good people and bad people had to go bankrupt and you know never heard from him again and you probably never will hear from him again but you know I survived to a point where the company is much bigger now than it ever was and much stronger financially than it ever was and I wrote a book about it but in the early 90s you faced the possibility of losing everything in fact on paper you had lost pretty much everything I had faced the possibility of losing everything and it I went back to work I focused I focused my mental energies and all of my energies he never thought of giving up no I think one of the reasons I really succeeded and bigger than even in the 80s is the fact that it's a little word called perseverance I didn't stop quite low runner it's a long word come to think of it but I didn't stop and I did persevere against a lot of odds and I came up with a phrase survive till 95 that was in the early 1990s and it turned out to be right because the world changed the economy changed and there was a survival tactic till a certain year and in 1995 things started changing but I mean it really started changing for me almost right at the beginning because I went back to work I refocused my energies I'm desperate were you at that time well how depressed did you get well to start off with I really blame myself a little bit because I've always been able to pick markets and I really wasn't focused toward the end of the 80s because I was having too good a time I was enjoying my life too much things were going too well you dropped your god I did drop my guard and it's no different than you if you do 15 great interviews you know you're sort of on the sixteenth you can take it easy because well that happens in life that's a human trait and I did drop my guard and what I did is I reput up my guard and we put up my defenses and my offense is much stronger than I ever did in the 80s and worked probably harder than I did in the 70s and 80s and actually became much more successful you have to believe in your own abilities wasn't there a time when you thought I really can't hack it I should get out of this well that was not suited to this there were some pretty depressing times because I had owed billions and billions of dollars 975 million or so was personally guaranteed and that's a pretty deep hole and when you're that deep in debt you're mired in debt and you're that deep in debt and that's a pretty rough situation to be in and the vultures are circling around you well you had plenty of vultures you had plenty of bad people circling and some good people that frankly wanted to get paid but it was just it was hunkered down time as they say in Georgia and I I did do that did you learn some lessons about the people who were your friends and the people who weren't your friends I wrote once unless they were painful and I wrote once that I would love to sort of have a bad period financially just to see who my friends would be and who my enemies would be now never write it again because it's not fun by yourself fulfilling prophecy well that's Joanna so I don't want to write it again I wrote it once and I had that down period and that down period I learned a lot I learned a lot about myself but I will tell you I also learned that there are some very good friends out there for me and there were some people that did not help tell me about the women in your life because there seems the sense in which you you say in the book you've measured women by by your mother well I have a wonderful mother a great mother and I don't say I measure women by my mother but I have a woman in my mother who's a terrific woman and I've been married to two 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 first of all time but even your own mental psyche I mean my thing is I'm thinking about deals and I'm thinking about these great buildings all over and you know that I'm doing and building the largest job ever approved by the New York City Planning Commission of the Westside you know that's a thought process there's a lot of things that I'm doing and building and I'm thinking about that maybe as opposed to relationship I'm not saying that in a positive way I'm saying it almost in a negative way because it's very negative in terms of relationship and success may be great in terms of living and lifestyle and beautiful homes and apartments and boats and planes and all of the stuff that doesn't mean very much but success is not necessarily very good for a relationship women are far stronger than men you say you really believe that I believe that women are actually stronger than men and I actually say that they're not so much stronger but I think they're more aggressive than men and their sex drives makes us look like babies I think that the women sex drive is actually as good or greater than a men sex drive Anna and I mean I've been witness to it and perhaps you have if you're lucky but but sex drive of women is extraordinary and they like to portray themselves as the weaker sex but the weaker sex doesn't exist believe me I think they probably there's certainly the more aggressive sex and even in business I found that some women are just more aggressive and I don't exactly know why and I say this with respect I don't say this with scorn with anything else I say this kind of great respect but I think that women in many cases are more aggressive than men you've seen that sex drive firsthand you talk about the woman of great social pedigree and the dinner party that you went to tell me about that well I've had I've had a lot of circumstances where a woman's sexual drive has turned out to be just extraordinary and not necessarily anticipated by me and I write about this in the book and it's pretty good stuff this was really a Pacific dinner though wasn't it this was a specific dinner and and what happened well I'd rather let the book speak to it because to be honest it's almost embarrassing talking about it in a in an interview but because it really is mostly a business book but I think that women have a lot to do with business they have a lot to do with the effect on your life and how they affect your life every huge amount to do with it she embarrassed you though this woman I mean you don't name her in the book but she don't know I would never name her somebody else wrote a book and named all the women that he had as he said concurred and explained with the feet under the table was yes it was and and it was a whole thing and it led to something that was sort of interesting and it just wasn't a very good thing especially with her husband sitting on the other side of the table and there are so many instances like this and I do talk about them in the book and they're interesting it's not what the book is all about but the book is about success and frankly women so influenced you and the world and the world around you that I devote a lot of time to women in the book you say women have one of the great acts of all time the smart ones act very feminine and needy but inside they're real killers it's also you have almost a sort of love-hate relationship with women well I might I mean I have mostly a love relationship with one because I totally admire respect and love women I think what are incredible but I really do I feel that there there is a I feel that the smart ones are the ones that really go out and do it without waving the banner of women's liberation and if you look at the really successful women those are the ones that have not had a wave that big banner they've just gone out and done it two wives you've had Ivana and Marla do what do you think of them now I have good relationships with both of them I've had fights you you're in an ongoing fight with one of them where at the time the book was being written I mean we'll see I'd rather be able to address that question sometime later because at this moment I have a very good relationship with Ivana I think I have a very good relationship with Marla but I'll be able to tell you better in about a month or two we'll find out you stress the importance though of the prenuptial agreement even though you say it's a vicious and it's an ugly document and people who sign it are 50% more likely to divorce than those who don't but yet you stress this is this is a key to a happy marriage is it right well prenuptial agreements are ugly vicious terrible documents that you have to have I mean it's if you're getting married and if you're a person of substance man or 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 10 years fighting over a divorce agreement you need certainty and you just have to have a prenuptial agreement and even when you do you have battles as you've shown it's not foolproof in when you do I mean even when you have a well prenuptial is a pretty foolproof but they still fight and and people will still fight over prenups I mean the scores of people that have fought for more than their prenuptial agreements have given them our Legion but you know the prenup shows a very strong agreement send hold up so they take the romance out of it yeah it does it's always tough to go up to somebody and say you know gee 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 it's always it's always really tough it's a very unromantic agreement there's nothing nice about a prenuptial agreement 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 for somebody to have one and I mean so important that I actually devote a chapter in the book to prenuptial agreements so you think that if you can sort out the finances that somehow the relationship will take care of itself I think that finances and relationship are very very different than the two of a good I think that that finances that the great success often leads to bad relationship unfortunately I think that the reason that somebody can become successful is that that focus is on his success his or her success not necessarily his or her relationship but I think that there are times when both can work beautifully and that's if you get the right partner and getting the right partner is is a very important thing in life I mean having the right partner can be a very beautiful thing in life if you're lucky enough to do that taking a break from romance now I sort of am I'm not it's certainly not number one in my mind I'm having a lot of fun doing what I'm doing it's just not number one in my mind glad to be free I really am available rather than other we're advertised now I wouldn't want to advertise it because I think there's nothing like having a great relationship I think having a great relationship is more important than deals and more important than everything else I find that business comes very easy to me relationship is always a much more difficult thing and I've just found that historically that's been the case most people would say it's just the opposite it's easier to have a relationship I think that relationship is based on so many different things that are adverse to business and I think that having having that great relationship does not necessarily go with having that great business most important to you seem to be your children it's that right this matters to your great deal yeah I have great children and they're very important to me and I think that's one of the great things that came out of both relationships and your parents still very close to that I'm very close to my parents I have a great relationship with them how did they inspire you in business because your father was a businessman is businessman my father was a builder in Brooklyn and Queens he built moderate income housing and some low income housing he was really good at what he did he was a real professional and I learned a lot just sitting at his knee you know listening to him from the time I grew up and and I just learned a lot about negotiating I learned a lot a lot about building I learned a lot about business and while he was at a different level in terms of the kind of thing he did he still built and he built you know some really good stuff he built some jobs out in Brooklyn and Queens out in the boroughs of New York for low and moderate-income people and you know he did a really good job of what he did tell me about your friends because you count some of the best known people in the world among your friends there was a dinner you went out to with Michael Jackson which you described in the book tell me about that because he seemed almost lost when you took him out to a restaurant lost looking at a menu what do you remember about that evening well Michael Jackson was literally just I mean he's a very good guy and he's having a difficult time but he was he was literally to go to a restaurant and we went to La Cirque the great Lacerte and with Syrio and Michael was sitting at the table and he just sort of it was just like he was never in a restaurant before he didn't know about menus he didn't know about things he was just and I said to him what was the last time you were at a restaurant and he said many many years ago and I could believe that was true because he was so under it's just restaurants aren't his thing did you have to wonder for him I mean we he did fine I'm just saying that he was just not somebody that was exposed to this kind of a life and what I what really was interesting was at the cirque you had these great celebrities and they had never asked for an autograph and they like people asked them for autographs and they were coming up to my table asking Michael for his autograph that to me was the funniest part in the evening Sylvester Stallone another friend of yours he's a great off with him he is he's a he's a great guy is a good golfer he's a he's a very smart guy you know people don't give sly credit for the brain they give him other credits but they don't give him credit for that he's a very smart guy who's done a terrific job and I mean Yin he insisted on playing rocky they were going to have somebody else play rocky he wouldn't let it go without him playing I mean this guy is smart and tough and he's a terrific guy and Frank Sinatra you fell out with at one point didn't you what was that what was all that about well I had a dinner and I actually apologized in this book for it because I said some negative things about Frank and in my second book I mean he was he's just been a terrific guy over over a lifetime it's all out there well he was very rough and tough at a table with somebody not me with somebody at the table namely his wife and I was really shocked at it I was surprised that I mean I've seen a lot of things so I don't get shot too easy but I've been I've been you know I was just amazed at how how bad this particular incident was and then I realized I mean you go outside and everybody's pulling at his coat strings trying to get his autograph and trying to break him down one way or the other and it really was pretty tough from a lot of stand points 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 I mean Malcolm Forbes was a great guy and a friend of mine but when I was having trouble Forbes magazine put me on the cover and they started doing some negative stories and everything else and I didn't feel good about Malcolm Forbes and then I realized he was just doing his thing he was just doing his job he was doing the right thing and I apologized to Malcolm Forbes because he was really just doing his thing and you know Malcolm Forbes has since died and New York City has lost a great guy and a great character the the impression from what you write is them you haven't had a good press you haven't enjoyed relations with the press you think the press is mislead you lie to you well I think that an occupational hazard or do you think you've been really badly treated I think it's occupational has a lot of the press is very dishonest I think a lot of the press is really really dishonest but I think that I've been totally you see most people think I get great publicity I happen to think I get terrible publicity so you know what can it save do you mind what people write about I used to mind my say about you I used to mind much more one thing I have learned it's it's a one-week phenomena it doesn't matter at the end of a week usually at the end of the day but usually at the end of a week it's totally gone you don't even remember the story and once you get that into your head you can live with it the lessons that you've learned of your career nobody nobody leans on you do they you've very very focused about that well I think I think I help people I like people I have a good relationship with people I have a lot of great relationships in terms of business and in terms of people generally I will try to lean on you yeah everyone tries to lean on me but but I have I have lots of really good relationship and I don't mind being leaned on if it's to help somebody I think I really enjoy helping people at high levels and at low levels I'm feel it's very important to give to charity I give a lot of money to charity I try and help as much as I can but but you know there there are times when you just have to say that's enough that's all I can do even might look at you and think to themselves I wonder what it's like to have all that money don't what is it like to have all that money well again money does not buy happiness and it does not buy lots of other things but it certainly makes life easier and it really does create it lets me create what I want to do artistically because I'm an artist in a certain sense I'm an artist I built the greatest buildings in the world I'm the biggest developer in New York City I love what I'm doing and I put up great things and and having money and having the kind of access to money that I have allows me to do what I like to do best and if someone says I want to be Donald Trump what would you say - I'd say lots of luck Donald Trump thanks very much for sharing your views with us on our talk thank you thank you very much thank you great honor you

Channel: BBC HARDtalk

Views: 2,111,342

Keywords: BBC Hardtalk, politics, interview BBC, Donald Trump, Tim Sebastian

Id: y4CqF4hjCGI

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 15 2016