Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Event/Special
All Business: The Essential Donald Trump. Aired 10p-12a ET
Aired September 05, 2016 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The following is a CNN special report.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump! Trump!
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SPECIAL REPORT SHOW HOST: He's the most unconventional candidate in modern history.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not using the lobbyists, I'm not using donors. I don't care. I'm really rich.
BORGER: An outsider.
TRUMP: Our politicians are stupid.
BORGER: Upending the rules of the game.
REINCE PRIEBUS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: He represents sort of an earthquake in a box to Washington, D.C.
TRUMP: Thank you.
BORGER: Winning more primary votes than any republican ever.
TRUMP: You've given me the honor to lead the Republican Party to victory this fall.
BORGER: He's a father of five.
IVANKA TRUMP-KUSHNER, DONALD TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: I'm the woman I am today because of how he raised me. He taught me to dream big.
BORGER: A billionaire businessman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anything he touched turned in to gold.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald is a star. Like him or not like him.
BORGER: He nearly lost everything.
How close was he to going personally bankrupt?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Debt.
BORGER: He's the master of the comeback. TRUMP: Trump is definitely back. Much to the chagrin of some people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody who can take a building for a million dollar and turn it to $550 million, that's fantastic.
BORGER: He's combative.
TRUMP: I like to punch him in the face, I tell you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was putting a tarnish on the Trump brand.
BORGER: And then you were fired.
TRUMP: On the spot.
BORGER: And now he's competing on the biggest stage of his life.
TRUMP: We will make America strong again.
(CROWD CHEERING)
And we will make America great again.
(CROWD CHEERING)
BORGER: Tonight, a CNN special report. All business: The essential Donald Trump
TRUMP-KUSHNER: It is my pleasure to introduce to you today my father, Donald J. Trump.
BORGER: The run actually started with a ride. Sewn the escalator in his name sake, Trump Tower. Awaiting him at the bottom, his daughter, Ivanka, and a gaggle of reporters.
TRUMP: Ladies and gentlemen...
BORGER: They knew this was coming.
TRUMP: I am officially running for president of the United States.
BORGER: But this took everyone by surprise.
TRUMP: When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
(CROWD CHANTING)
BORGER: It was clear from the start that this would be an election season like no other.
What was going through your mind at that moment?
TRUMP-KUSHNER: That moment and every subsequent moment has just been surreal. I mean, there's no way to prepare yourself for this. And especially for us, we're business people.
ERIC TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S SON: My father brought us into his office and he said, "You know, kids, we're going to do this." I'll never forget that, "We are going to do this." And here we are, and he's in the driver's seat. It is an incredible thing. It's just an amazing story.
BORGER: We wanted Donald Trump to tell his story in his own words, but despite repeated requests, he declined to be interviewed for this program.
So, how does a well-off kid from Queens get to the doorstep of the White House? Donald John Trump was born to win. The fourth of five children of Fred and Mary Trump, he was the most like his father.
TRUMP: I had a great relationship with my father. I had a wonderful father who was a tough guy, but he was a good guy. And he was a really good builder. He knew how to get things done.
BORGER: Fred Trump was a self-made millionaire whose buildings changed the landscape of Brooklyn and Queens.
DONALD TRUMP JR, DONALD TRUMP'S SON: He was just a worker. And that's what he did. I remember as a kid, he'd go spend a weekend with them. And it was, wow, what do you want to do? Well, I guess we'll go collect rents, we'll go do this, so...
BORGER: Collect rent?
TRUMP JR: Yes, his famous saying was to retire is expire.
BORGER: Is your dad like his father?
TRUMP JR: I think very much so. No one is going to outwork him. Nobody has got more energy than him.
[22:05:01] BORGER: As his father's young apprentice, Donald learned the rules of the game at an early age.
Michael D'Antonio wrote the biography "The Truth About Trump."
MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, AUTHOR: Fred Trump was a workaholic. Fred wasn't the kind of dad who said, let's go to the ball game on Sunday. He was the kind of dad who said, come to work with me and look around on the ground and see if you see any nails that the workmen should have picked up.
TRUMP JR: He's very just incredibly frugal. I mean, he'd see a nail on the ground and he pick it up because, you know, that was a cent, and that was value and save that for later.
BORGER: Fred instilled lessons that stuck with his son for the rest of his life.
D'ANTONIO: The first thing that Fred taught Donald was life is a competition, and that it's almost a competition to the death. So, there's only winning and losing. There's nothing else in life.
BORGER: Fred was also controversial, sued along with Donald by the Justice Department for race discrimination against potential black tenants. He settled without an admission of guilt.
While Fred was running his business, Donald's mother, Mary stayed at home.
E. TRUMP: She's that perfect combination of love but toughness. She would tell a joke and just have everybody in the room across many generations just laughing and laughing hysterically.
D'ANTONIO: She loved to have people looking at her, listening to her, paying attention to her, and I think this is partly where Donald gets his desire to be noticed.
BORGER: Donald's own personality would emerge at the private Q. Forest Day School.
PAUL ONISH, DONALD TRUMP'S TEAMMATE & FRIEND: He was very aggressive on the soccer field.
BORGER: Paul Onish was Donald's teammate and friend.
ONISH: We frequently showed our toughness to the other team during halftime. We would eat oranges whole without ever peeling them and they thought that we were crazy.
BORGER: Donald didn't like to lose.
ONISH: We would do anything we could that was within the legal grounds of playing soccer to prevent the other team from scoring.
BORGER: In the classroom, Donald's aggression often turned into mischief.
ONISH: We got in trouble by playing bumper desks. We would pull girls' hair in front of us and throw spitballs at other people when the teacher wasn't looking.
BORGER: Donald spent so much time in detention, his friends nicknamed it after him.
ONISH: We nicknamed it Donny Trump, so the teachers would say detention but we called it a D.T.
BORGER: By the eighth grade, Fred Trump had had enough and sent his son to military school to straighten him up.
TRUMP: I went to military academy because I wasn't the most well- behaved person in the world, and my parents had no idea what to do with me and they heard about this school that was a tough place.
D'ANTONIO: This is the only child they send away and they don't just send him to private school, they send him to a place where he's put in a uniform. This was a very rough place. BORGER: At New York Military Academy, Donald quickly got in line.
D'ANTONIO: These were little boys who were expected to be military cadets. So they lived in very spare rooms. They got up early, marched to mess, and sports was essential. This idea of being a champion.
BORGER: Formative years in young Donald's life.
D'ANTONIO: I don't think he ever really overcame this sense that he had to achieve at the highest level just to belong. The Trump kids, the boys especially, were taught that they were to be killers and kings. That meant that they were supposed to win at all costs and rule over others.
BORGER: As for his siblings, three of them would go on to great success, but his older brother, Fred, would lose his way, drink too much, and die young.
TRUMP: He was a great guy. He was the most handsome guy. He had the best personality. But he got hooked on alcohol and ultimately, it just was devastating. That's why I don't drink. You know, I don't drink. I don't drink. I don't smoke cigarettes. I don't take drugs.
D'ANTONIO: Donald likes to say that he learned everything that he wasn't supposed to do from the example of his brother, Fred Jr., but Fred was also a pretty genial, good-natured, soft-hearted guy.
[22:10:08] And I think in that, he sees proof that you're not supposed to be trusting anyone, you're not supposed to be vulnerable, you're not supposed to be soft. Always be driven, always be competitive, always be a winner. Otherwise, you die.
BORGER: Coming up, Donald Trump trying to make it in Manhattan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a person who was highly ambitious, that did have resources behind him, but a lot of that was really good real estate theater.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BORGER: By the mid '70s, Donald Trump had a degree from Wharton, a job with his father, and a plan to make a name for himself in Manhattan.
LOUISE SUNSHINE, FORMER DONALD TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT: Donald's father was based in Brooklyn. Avenue Z. That's where his office was.
BORGER: Louise Sunshine was one of Trump's first associates.
[22:15:02] SUNSHINE: Donald would sneak out of Brooklyn around midday and come to Lexington Avenue...
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: Sneak out? SUNSHINE: Well, leave. We would plot out everything we were doing in
New York.
BORGER: But Manhattan was a mess.
ALAN LAPIDUS, ARCHITECT: The city in those days was going bankrupt. The city was a sewer.
Architect Alan Lapidus worked with Fred Trump and later with Donald.
LAPIDUS: The Commodore which at one point had been the gem of New York, it's right next to and connected to Grand Central Station. Now that was boarded up. Homeless people were sleeping over there. Newspapers were blowing down the street.
GEORGE ROSS, TRUMP ORGANIZATION EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR COUNSEL: Fred called me and said I have a son at this point who's interested in doing things in Manhattan. I'd like you to talk to him.
BORGER: George Ross was Fred Trump's lawyer.
ROSS: Donald walked in, he was 27 years old and then he gave me the idea he had about transforming the Commodore Hotel. My reaction was he was way off base. It was impossible to do. And that he was out of touch with the reality of the situation, what was going on in New York at that time.
BORGER: Trump wasn't fazed. While the big developers were getting out of the city, Donald Trump wanted in.
ROSS: He went to get the financing, and the banks looked around and they said, wait a minute, we got so many bad loans in the city of New York, and they said, Trump, what do you know about running a hotel? You know what he said? "Nothing."
So they said, "Well, when you know how to run a hotel, or you get somebody that knows how to run a hotel, then we'll talk again." Figuring that was the end, they got rid of him.
BORGER: Instead of good riddance, Trump got the Hyatt Hotel chain on board. Promising them he would lock up a lucrative deal.
ROSS: He says the Hyatt, would you be that operator? What are they going to say, no?
BORGER: It's presented to them basically on a silver platter, right?
ROSS: Yes, except at that point, only he's got a Swiss cheese.
BORGER: Now, Trump needed to convince the city to give him an unprecedented tax break, something it hadn't done for a private developer, ever.
Mike Balkin was a lawyer for the city of New York.
MIKE BALKIN, NEW YORK CITY LAWYER: I sensed it from the beginning that this was a person who was highly ambitious, that had -- was very smart. That did have resources behind him, even though a lot of that was really good real estate theater.
BORGER: Really good real estate theater. Like when the city asked for proof that Trump was buying the hotel since he hadn't yet put down a deposit, he sent the paperwork over unsigned.
It all worked with political help from his father, Trump got the financing, the tax break and the partner he needed. And just a few years after walking into Ross' office, Trump completed an ambitious renovation of the hotel. The new Grand Hyatt helped spark New York's resurgence.
BALKIN: It moved them to the front rank of developers in New York, clearly. Almost overnight, he became a force in his own right.
BORGER: Trump was on top of the world.
CINDY ADAMS, NEW YORK POST COLUMNIST: Donald's a star. He's a nova. Like him or not like him.
BORGER: New York Post columnist Cindy Adams says Trump has been a generous friend of hers for decades. What was Trump like when you first met him?
ADAMS: Oh, he was -- he was full of himself as he is now.
BORGER: Confident and charismatic, Trump had an expanding business, a growing reputation, and plenty of attention from women.
ADAMS: I was running a Miss Universe parade in New York. The girls were not allowed to meet guys. They had chaperons. Well, he met them. He met them at night and I don't know how much later in the morning he unmet them, but he managed to them. Donald -- there wasn't a blond in New York he didn't -- he left unknown.
BORGER: So he was a ladies man.
ADAMS: Oh, yes. And then he met Ivana and he said he's madly in love with Ivana, and she speaks a little bit lousy but she's gorgeous and I'm going to marry her.
BORGER: He told Oprah it took him seven months to close the deal.
TRUMP: Ivana is very solid. And she's very -- she's a very nice woman, a very nice person. She's a friend. She's a lot of things. And frankly, I was dating a lot of people and I was dating the most beautiful people in the world. I got tired of it all of a sudden. I got tired.
BORGER: There was a church wedding, a beach honeymoon and three babies in the years to follow. Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. But Trump's work as a developer left little time to be a dad.
[22:19:58] TRUMP JR: It was not necessarily conventional relationship. It wasn't as much of let's go play catch in the backyard, so it was great but on his terms. You know, he was building a billion-dollar empire.
BORGER: Spending time with their father meant meeting him at the office.
TRUMP JR: Our quality time was much more work-related. I remember playing with trucks on the floor of his office. You know, going trick- or-treating in his office. And he'd have the biggest people in the world in there and we'd be playing on the floor.
BORGER: Trump next tackled a project that would put his personal stamp on the city. Trump Tower. He worked with a small team of mostly women. Barbara Res in charge of construction and wrote a book about her experience.
BARBARA RES, TRUMP'S EMPLOYEE: When he hired me, he told me I was a killer. That was what he saw in me. He liked that in women. He wanted them to zero in and not take any prisoners.
BORGER: Res says Trump gave her a tremendous opportunity but working with him wasn't easy. You wrote that some were afraid to challenge him, that he was that kind of a personality.
RES: Yes.
BORGER: Why is that?
RES: Well, he was very loud and mean and quick to react.
BORGER: Mean?
RES: Yes, he was mean. He was mean to his employees.
BORGER: How so?
RES: He would tell them that they don't know what they're doing, he would criticize them in front of other people.
BORGER: How did he handle when he was challenged?
RES: He did like being challenged ever.
BORGER: Ever?
RES: Yes, ever.
BORGER: During construction, there was plenty of controversy about how, where, and by whom Trump tower was built. It was then Trump learned to use the press to his advantage.
SUNSHINE: I used to run into his office like a shrieking maniac saying to him, but Donald, this is terrible, look at the press. He'd say, oh, calm down, all publicity is good publicity. And out I'd go.
BORGER: In fact, no one was better at promoting Trump than Trump. Using the alias, John Baron.
Did you ever meet John Baron?
RES: I heard John Baron on the phone, Donald was impersonating John Baron.
BORGER: Did you find it funny?
RES: You know, I thought it was kind of creative on his part. He got the word out there and he constantly got press. We were getting incessant press.
BORGER: Do you remember any of the stories he told?
RES: He planted that Princess Di was looking for an apartment in Trump tower.
BORGER: And that didn't happen?
RES: No, but it made the papers.
BORGER: Regardless of whether or not it was true.
He has said people want to believe something is the biggest and greatest and most spectacular and he said, I call it truthful hyperbole.
SUNSHINE: I mean, that was my job.
BORGER: Right.
SUNSHINE: My job was to make his fantasies become a reality. I remember him saying to me, and your mission, Louise, is to make sure the world knows that my brand is worth a thousand dollars a square foot more than the building next door.
BORGER: Everything about Trump Tower was meant to redefine luxury and prestige, the dramatic atrium, the 80-foot waterfall. And the distinctive marble Ivana chose personally from an Italian quarry. It became a city landmark and tourist attraction.
TRUMP JR: I mean, that was a really unique project, cutting edge.
BORGER: Which sent trump's celebrity sky high.
TRUMP JR: He was a young guy. He put up one of the most significant buildings, truly, in the world. Trump Tower really made my father.
BORGER: Coming up, Donald Trump silencing his critics.
MARVIN ROFFMAN, SECURITIES ANALYST: I was putting a tarnish on the Trump brand. You don't do that.
BORGER: A then you were fired.
ROFFMAN: On the spot.
[22:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK) BORGER: New York City. Broadway. Celebrity. And Gossip. For decades, Gossip has been Cindy Adams' beat. And few people were better for business than Donald Trump and his wife, Ivana. Do you remember them as a couple sort of on the Manhattan social scene?
ADAMS: Yes. They were at events. And Ivana was gorgeous and she was terrific. She was a very hardworking woman. She was a very smart woman. She knew a lot. She raised great kids.
BORGER: Tom Barrack has been a friend of Trump's for decades.
THOMAS BARRACK, TRUMP'S FRIEND: It was never, you're on my arm and you are a trophy so stay that way. She was in the middle of all his businesses.
BORGER: And Trump's businesses were booming. Over 100 miles from Trump Tower, new gaming laws had turned a sleepy shore town into the hot spot to be.
ROFFMAN: When casino gaming came into Atlantic City, it was a monopoly.
BORGER: Marvin Roffman analyzed the gaming business for a prominent financial services firm.
ROFFMAN: They had basically the whole eastern market to themselves and everyone was looking for land to build a casino.
BORGER: Trump bought a prime spot on the boardwalk and convinced Harrah's to partner with him. Together, they made a deal to build Trump Plaza. Harrah's knew to succeed; the casino needed close easy parking. Architect Alan Lapidus says Trump was on board with the plan.
LAPIDUS: Donald said, I bought the property across the street. You know, it's going to be a parking garage, there will be a bridge right across, it's going to go right into the casino.
BORGER: But when Trump Plaza opened, there was no garage.
LAPIDUS: As long as Harrah's was there, Trump simply refused to build a parking garage.
[22:29:59] BORGER: Earnings were disappointing and tensions rose and then Trump bought Harrah's out.
LAPIDUS: I think his plans were to use Harrah's to secure his financing, and once the financing was secure and the hotel was up it was just a matter of time before he altered that situation.
BORGER: And one Harrah's was out...
LAPIDUS: He built the parking. And the hotel took off as he knew it would. Donald does not do well in partnerships. Plays well with others is not a big pseudo of Trump's.
BORGER: But showmanship is, so Trump placed his bets on boxing. JOHN 'JACK' O'DONNELL, TRUMP PLAZA HOTEL SENIOR EXECUTIVE: In the
three years I was there, we did 33 world championship fights.
BORGER: Jack O'Donnell was an executive at Trump plaza.
O'DONNELL: We became the boxing capital of the world and that was a big deal to Donald Trump.
BORGER: But Donald Trump wanted even more. And when the New Jersey Generals went up for sale, he jumped at the chance to take on the NFL.
Herschel Walker, once the best player in college football, played for Trump's Generals.
HERSHEL WALKER, AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYER: The team sort of took a couple of notches up now because they saw a guy, like I saw, he brought class, he brought a different -- a workaholic, he brought something different and he's young.
BORGER: During the briefing distance of the United States Football League, Trump challenged the NFL for press and by paying a premium to sign players.
WALKER: He went out and got him some more talented players and I think we started winning and we started making a name for ourselves in New York.
BORGER: Trump embodied the high-flying '80s. By 1989, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.7 billion. And for the last half of the decade, he'd gone on a spending spree.
He bought a second casino, Trump's Castle. The iconic plaza hotel in New York. A Palm Beach estate. An airline. A yacht. And the largest track of undeveloped land in Manhattan.
Trump captured the story of his success in the book "The Art of the Deal." Tony Schwartz was the co-author, a decision he now regrets.
TONY SCHWARTZ, "THE ART OF THE DEAL" CO-AUTHOR: From the very first interview, it was very clear that he had an exceptionally short attention span, easily grew impatient and was going to be incredibly hard to interview at all.
BORGER: Schwartz said he had to find another way.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Sometimes you got to know who to go to as opposed to whatever...
BORGER: So, Trump let him listen in on his phone calls for months. Is there any call that sticks out in your mind or are they all blended?
SCHWARTZ: There is a call that sticks out in my mind. It was a call with a contractor and he's going, you son of a -- if you don't -- I will and I'm telling you, you'll never work again in this city. Boom. He slams the phone down. And he turns to me totally relaxed with a big smile on his face and he says, you think it worked? BORGER: Schwartz says that much of what he heard Trump say was false.
SCHWARTZ: I came up with this phrase, truthful hyperbole, which is, you know, I called it an innocent form of exaggeration. Now I can call up something that I actually sold for $2 million, I could say $10 million, and that becomes truthful hyperbole. The problem is that there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole. The truth is the truth. Hyperbole is a lie. They don't go together.
BORGER: But that didn't keep the book from spending almost one year as a New York Times bestseller. Still, there was one more thing Trump wanted. One of the biggest casinos in the world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was going to do whatever he could to get the Taj Mahal.
And after months of complicated negotiations, he did.
MARVIN ROFFMAN, SECURITIES ANALYST: And my telephone rang, and he said, Marvin, didn't I do a terrific deal? And I said, I think you did a great deal, but I think you made mistake. You know...
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: You said Donald Trump he made a mistake?
ROFFMAN: I said I think you made a mistake. And he said, what do you mean? I said, why own three casinos in Atlantic City? How are you going to differentiate the marketing? And here was his comment. "Marvin, you have no vision, this is going to be a monster property."
BORGER: That needed monster financing. Trump said it wouldn't be an issue, telling gaming regulators...
[22:35:02] ROFFMAN: That the bankers were waiting in line to lend him the money. And that under no circumstances would he resort to junk bond financing.
But the banks weren't standing in line to lend Trump money, so he resorted to the very junk bonds he had said he didn't need.
How big a risk did you think he was taking?
ROFFMAN: Enormous risk. To be able to make this project successful, to break even, you'd have to generate a casino win of somewhere over $1 million a day. And no casino in the world had ever even come close to anything like that.
BORGER: Roffman told the Wall Street Journal he saw trouble coming.
ROFFMAN: I said, when this property opens, it will break every record in the book, but when the cold winds of October came, it wouldn't make it.
BORGER: Trump wrote a letter to Roffman's boss, threatening to bring suit, Trump presented them with a simple choice. Fire Roffman or make him publicly apologize and lie.
ROFFMAN: Trump said, "Marvin, you're to call Norman Pearlstein," and he said "he's the managing editor of the Wall Street General and you're to tell him that that SOB reporter misquoted you, and then you're going to write me a paper stating that the Taj Mahal is going to be the greatest success ever and I'm going to have it published."
BORGER: Roffman refused.
ROFFMAN: Trump responded saying that I'll see you in court or something. I was putting a tarnish on the Trump brand. That's anathema to Donald Trump. You don't do that.
BORGER: And then you were fired.
ROFFMAN: On the spot.
BORGER: Trump never sued, but Roffman did. Nine months later, Roffman settled for an undisclosed amount.
On opening night, the Taj was promoted as the eighth wonder of the world.
TRUMP: The building is a tremendous smash. Everybody wants to see it.
BORGER: And see Donald Trump.
STEVE PERSKIE, FORMER NEW JERSEY CASINO CONTROL COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: Donald. Donald. It's Trump. Donald. People rushed to him to touch him, to touch his shoulder, to touch his arm.
BORGER: It was the biggest bet of his career.
PERSKIE: He was the magic man. Anything he touched turned to gold. So even with the Marvin Roffman's of the world projecting that this couldn't work, there were very many people who believed that it would. And Donald Trump kept assuring everybody, don't worry about it, you got nothing to worry about.
BORGER: Coming up, Trump nearly loses it all. How close was he to going personally bankrupt?
ALAN LAPIDUS, ARCHITECT: Very.
[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BORGER: Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. One of the biggest in the world. Lots of glitz, glamour and stagecraft. But behind the curtain, serious problems.
LAPIDUS: When I went there on opening day, it was a mess.
BORGER: Alan Lapidus was the architect for Trump plaza.
LAPIDUS: I mean, you couldn't find your way around without a guide dog which is not good for a casino. BORGER: And Lapidus says the casino control commission had issues,
too.
LAPIDUS: They shut down a third of the slots. The slots are the prime revenue producer of the casino. To shut down the third on opening day was both humiliating and financially disastrous.
JOHN 'JACK' O'DONNELL, TRUMP PLAZA HOTEL SENIOR EXECUTIVE: It was really was a breakdown of monumental proportions.
Jack O'Donnell ran Trump Plaza for three years. He was there when the Taj opened.
O'DONNELL: Donald's answer to the problem was to immediately go in and shame, belittle, and berate and demand firings in the midst of the chaos and that's the last thing that a good leader does in that situation.
BORGER: O'Donnell was ultimately tapped to restore calm at the Taj. Just weeks later, O'Donnell says resigned. Trump says he was fired.
O'DONNELL: Donald is so wrapped up and hyperbole that it's almost constant lies. Something could go bad like the opening of the Taj, and he would say it's because we had so much business here that this happened. Not that the systems broke down, not that we didn't know what we were doing. We had so much business broke down.
LARRY KING, LARRY KING LIVE SHOW HOST: What about the slot machine thing when they were down for a while?
TRUMP: The slots were so hot, again, nobody is, again, nobody seeing people play that hard and that fast.
KING: So, it blew out the slots literally?
TRUMP: They blow apart. We had machines that...
(CROSSTALK)
KING: They're like too much -- fuse?
TRUMP: There was like a fuse or like a fire. They were virtually -- it was like a fuse or like a fire.
BORGER: No one felt the heat more than Trump, himself. With his life playing out in the papers, from his businesses, to the breakup of his 12-year marriage to Ivana.
JAY GOLDBERG, ATTORNEY: Everybody place they went, they were covered.
BORGER: Attorney Jay Goldberg was Donald Trump's divorce lawyer.
GOLDBERG: To me, I equated it with World War III. It was on front page, back page, inside covers, inside story.
BORGER: Cindy Adams, friend of Donald covered it all for the New York Post.
CINDY ADAMS, NEW YORK POST COLUMNIST: They were at the Manhattan social scene, they were at events. Ivana always had much to say. The problem is, you can't equal Donald's fame, and also he never found a blond he couldn't touch.
[22:45:06] BORGER: Enter Marla Maples. She was a beauty pageant winner fresh from Georgia. An aspiring model and actress in her early 20s.
So when did the relationship with Marla start?
ADAMS: Well, the relationship with Marla started when he was still married happily to Ivana. That's when the relationship started.
LAPIDUS: When Donald was still married to Ivana, about so to sleep and around with Marla, I was what was is cloak really known as the beard. I would took Marla out to dinner and at some point to me in the evening she would disappear into the casino limousine.
BORGER: Marla stayed at Trump Plaza while Ivana worked at Trump's castle across town. They would eventually cross paths here on the slopes of Aspen. The tabloids exploded and so did the marriage.
TRUMP: I hate divorce. I hate the concept of divorce. And I really thought it was going to be a one-day wonder. And with me, it turns out to be like, you know, 22 days of tabloids and tabloids and covers.
BORGER: After a long battle, Ivana walked away with a $14 million settlement, a mansion in Connecticut, and full custody of the children.
TRUMP: She's the mother of my children. She's a good woman. I'll always love Ivana.
GOLDBERG: He was very restrained in the comments that he made about Ivana. So I believe that there was an element of good feeling. Trump's personal life was in shambles and professionally, he wasn't fairing much better. He said it was because he took his eye off the ball. Did Trump ever acknowledge to you that he knew he was in big trouble is.
ALAN POMERANTZ, REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY: Oh, yes. I think he borrowed more than most other prudent real estate people. He had extended himself to the Trump shuttle, to a yacht, to a helicopter and a lot of things which weren't generating cash flow and he had to support his lifestyle, so he was in trouble.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody else want to bid $190,000? We're going to sell it.
BORGER: When the economy and the real estate market plummeted in 1990, attorney Alan Pomerantz says Donald Trump owed $4 billion to his debtors including almost a billion dollars for which he was personally responsible.
POMERANTZ: Because he personally guaranteed so much debt, the leverage shifted dramatically over to the banks because it was no longer an issue of a bank and a piece of real estate. It was a bank and Donald Trump's actual survival.
BORGER: Trump owed money all over town. To 72 banks in all. Pomerantz represented them as a group. How close was he to going personally bankrupt?
POMERANTZ: Very.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you think you were going to go under water at one time, bankrupt?
TRUMP: Well, I didn't like thinking about it but there was always that possibility. I mean, you owe billions and billions of dollars and you have the more dangerous personal guarantee at $ $975 million. And, you know, you can have wonderful assets and all but the economy was a disaster. Real estate was in particular a disaster. And I certainly was in deep trouble.
BORGER: Trump makes the point of saying he never went personally bankrupt, but there's a reason why the banks decided to keep Trump whole.
POMERANTZ: We made the decision that he would be worth more alive to us than dead. Dead meaning, in bankruptcy. We don't want him to be in bankruptcy. We want him out in the world selling these assets for us.
BORGER: So you wanted him alive because he was a salesman and could best sell his own properties.
POMERANTZ: That's correct. We kept him alive to help us.
BORGER: The debt holders hammered out a five-year plan for Trump to repay his personal debts. Pomerantz resided as the mogul signed away his fortunes.
POMERANTZ: It's a big conference room and it's a big, long table. And at the head of the table, Mr. Trump is sitting in the middle, I'm sitting on his left, and his lawyer is sitting on the right. I was sitting with a stack of documents.
BORGER: That big?
POMERANTZ: Oh, there was -- it was big. I said, Trump, this is a lien on the plaza hotel. He would sign. This is a lien on the Trump shuttle.
BORGER: Then a true Trump moment.
POMERANTZ: In the middle of this, he says, "Alan, can we take a few minutes?" And I said, "sure." And he called one of his people over. He sends them out. Guy comes back, young man comes back with two big boxes of books.
And he says, "I would like to thank all the banks here for all your help," and he takes these books out and he starts to sign these books to the bankers.
BORGER: So, let me get this straight. "The Art of the Deal" is about...
POMERANTZ: How fabulous he is.
BORGER: Right. Takes out "The Art of the Deal" and signs it to the people who are negotiating with him to whom he owes...
POMERANTZ: Four billion dollars.
[22:50:01] BORGER: Four billion dollars. Down but not out, Trump kept on promoting.
KING: Atlantic City, up or down?
TRUMP: I think it's going to be down. You have to understand Atlantic City 10 years ago was an absolute slum. Now you have a billion-dollar building rising out of the slum. It's a very interesting dichotomy.
BORGER: But in fact, two of his Atlantic City casinos were on the brink of failure. Steve Perskie took over at the Casino Control Commission in 1990. He remembers when Trump's father, Fred, tried to rescue his son. By buying $3 million in chips.
PERSKIE: Fred Trump's lawyer was handed that value in chips and took the chips out of the casino. You could call it a $3 million loan.
BORGER: Problem was, the loan was against the rules and the casino was fined. Even worse? It was nowhere near enough. In July 1991, under crushing debt, the Taj Mahal filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, stiffing investors and forcing small businesses to accept pennies on the dollar for their work.
PERSKIE: When he filed the bankruptcy proceedings, hundreds and hundreds of company, individuals and companies, that were punished because they chose to do business with Donald Trump, a lot of suppliers, a lot of manufacturers, a lot of workers, a lot of small businesses, got hurt badly.
BORGER: By March 1992, Trump's castle and Trump Plaza followed suit.
PERSKIE: The reason that Trump's casinos failed in Atlantic City have nothing to do with the nature of industry in the Atlantic City, with respect to the recession; all of the other properties in Atlantic City made it through all of that. Trump's properties did not because of the decisions that he made.
BORGER: Despite repeated requests, Donald Trump refused to be interviewed for this program. But at a CNN debate last year, he expressed his view on what happened in Atlantic City.
TRUMP: Atlantic City is a disaster and I did great in Atlantic City. I knew when it get out. My timing was great. I got a lot of credit for it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If he did great in Atlantic City, a lot of people
didn't do great. That's really the story. There's thousands of people that got hurt as a result of his bankruptcy. That in and of itself is just a sad tale for his legacy.
BORGER: Up next, a new kind of deal for the developer.
LAPIDUS: He became McDonald's. He became a franchise.
BORGER: Then, Trump and women.
IVANKA TRUMP-KUSHNER, DONALD TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: There's no way I could be the person I am today if my father was a sexist.
[22:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just the way you like it, right?
BORGER: By February 1990, Trump was separated from his first wife, Ivana, and Marla maples was on the scene, but it was a bumpy ride.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marla, can you give us a no comment?
BORGER: On again.-
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you getting married and if so, when?
TRUMP: Are we getting married?
BORGER: Off again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you two back together?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, we are right now, aren't we? Well, we're just going sort of try and keep that quiet for a bit.
TRUMP: We're great fries.
BORGER: Trump's love life kept the tabloids buzzing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your position there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm sort of handling pr because he gets so much of it.
BORGER: A spokesman for Trump calling himself John Miller explained it this way to a reporter over the phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody that has a lot of options and, frankly, you know, he gets called like everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book - in terms of women.
BORGER: John Miller linked the mogul to women including Kim Basinger and Madonna.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marla wants to be back with him and he wants to be with her, but he just -- he just feels it's too soon. It's like when he makes the decision, he's very capable of a total commitment when he makes the decision. But he felt it's too soon.
BORGER: That total commitment finally came in December 1993. Before a thousand guests, Marla became Mrs. Trump in a lavish ceremony held at the Plaza Hotel just two months after Donald and Marla's daughter, Tiffany Arianna, was born. Trump three's older children stayed in Aspen with their mother, Ivana.
BORGER: When your father married Marla you and your brothers the three of you decided not to go?
TRUMP-KUSHNER: Well, going to Aspen was a tradition and was something that we had done our whole lives, and it was something that was very important to my mother and it was a memory that we wanted to have again and we wanted to have with her especially at that time.
GOLDBERG: It was a wonderful wedding.
BORGER: Jay Goldberg, Donald's divorce attorney, had drafted some uncommon paperwork for Trump before the wedding.
GOLDBERG: You're familiar with the prenuptial. You're familiar with the post-nuptial. But a sunset agreement is very, very rare that's an agreement that provides that if they're married, a certain period of time or less then the woman gets a fixed amount. It's not the normal.
BORGER: Did he say, I want a regular pre-nup, I want a five-year sunset?
GOLDBERG: Yes, yes.
BORGER: Trump put it this way to ABC.
TRUMP: That's so bad. Somebody gets married, it doesn't work out, you get a million bucks. I mean, you know, I think a million dollars is a lot of money.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, you don't.
TRUMP: No, I don't, actually. The fact is that a million dollars for somebody coming into a marriage if something -- and I'm not talking about anybody specifically, but it's a lot of money for somebody.
BORGER: And by 1994, Trump was back in the business of doing what he loved most. Making a lot of money.
[23:00:00] TRUMP: It's the best year I've ever had. Trump is definitely back. Much to the chagrin of some people.
BORGER: His path back was rooted in what he knew best, real estate. He bought a downtown landmark, 40 Wall Street, for a cool $1 million in 1995.
ROSS: He started to refurbish, put in new elevators, put on electricity. And the market turned around. And it had a lot to do with the Trump touch.
BORGER: George Ross is a longtime Trump adviser.
He says it's one of the best deals he ever made.
ROSS: I don't only think one, I think it's the best.
BORGER: The best deal?
ROSS: It's the best real estate deal I have ever seen. And I've been in the business more than 50 years. Anybody who can take a building for a million dollars and turn it into something that's worth $550 million in a period of 15 years, to me, that's fantastic.
BORGER: But the big projects Trump favored before the corporate bankruptcies remained out of his reach.
SELTSER: He had lost credibility with the financial community.
BORGER: Richard Seltser is a prominent New York real estate attorney.
SELTSER: Thanks we're no longer loaning to him. He had defaulted on other loans. He -- he had sent companies that he owned into bankruptcy. The credit markets have tightened up on him.
BORGER: He had to change tactics. Now, he needed partners.
TRUMP: I think it probably is a change in philosophy because normally, I would have done everything a hundred percent myself. So now, I have joint venture partners to do things.
BORGER: Partners to put up the money for projects like Riverside South, a 77-acre tract of land he'd been trying to develop for more than 15 years.
TRUMP: It goes all the way from 72nd Street down to 59th Street.
BORGER: When we couldn't pay the mortgage, Trump sold Riverside South to partners who bought the land, took care of his debt, paid him to manage the project, and gave him a 30 percent cut of the profit once it was sold.
SELTSER: If you drive down the west side highway now, in very big bronze, almost gold-looking letters, you see Trump on building after building after building, as if these were Trump buildings.
TRUMP: OK, let's go.
BORGER: Seltser tangled with Trump in court over a $4 million commission Trump owed to realtor, Barbara Corcoran.
SELTSER: He is a bully that takes advantage of people who've done a good job for him. And he doesn't care. Bullies often believe that they can get away with less than the truth.
Part of bullying is making up your own truth and propelling it based on your vehemence.
BORGER: The judge awarded Corcoran the full $4 million, saying the only damages in the case were to Trump's bruised ego. But the worth of Trump's name endured.
PASIKOF: Trump was a visionary in terms of the belief that he could license the name.
BORGER: Robert Pasikof is a branding expert who has studied the value of the Trump name.
PASIKOF: You take an apartment building. It's not his. He didn't build it. Someone else built it. They've just cut a deal that they're going to franchise his name.
The square footage on that building just went up 30 percent.
Because (ph) most of the buildings that have Trump on it, he doesn't have any ownership in. He became McDonald's. He became a franchise.
That was developer's paradise. I mean, there's never been a more perfect development scheme -- no money, no risk, no involvement, no exposure of any kind, and nothing but pure profit.
BORGER: After a six-year absence from the "Forbes" 400 richest Americans list, Trump returned in 1996. The next year, he released his bestselling book, "The Art of the Comeback."
His renewed knack for making money in the mid '90s allowed him to pursue his passions from the estate at Maralago, to new golf courses, to the purchase of the Miss Universe pageant.
TRUMP: Well, Miss Universe is great, you know (ph), fun, beautiful women, beautiful everything, I mean (ph), Miss Universe was a -- was a fun little venture.
BORGER: OK.
TRUMP: I'll work out with her any time she wants, I'll tell you.
(UNKNOWN): OK.
BORGER: That had some not so fun moments, too. Alicia Machado was the reigning Miss Universe when Trump bought the pageant in 1996 and staged a press event saying she needed to lose some weight.
TRUMP: When she won the contest, I have never seen anybody more beautiful. And she's totally beautiful now. But...
BORGER: Trump often made comments about women's appearances. On Howard Stern's (ph) radio show in 2005...
TRUMP: I would say she's in the four or five category.
STERN: Right.
TRUMP: I view a -- a person who's flat-chested as very hard to be a 10, OK?
BORGER: To the campaign trail.
(UNKNOWN): But I'm just reading the poll for what it is. Look at that face. Why would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that's the face of our next president?
BORGER: To his infamous drum beat of criticism of Megyn Kelly after she asked him about sexist comments in a Fox News debate.
KELLY: You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account has several...
TRUMP: Only Rosie O'Donnell.
(APPLAUSE)
KELLY: No, it wasn't.
TRUMP: Listen, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.
BORGER: Claims of misogyny and chauvinism, Ivanka Trump has heard it all.
(UNKNOWN): Asking you as a daughter, a mother, a businesswoman, much has been said about how he regards women. And so if I ask you the question flat-out, is he a sexist?
TRUMP: He's absolutely not a sexist. There is no way I could be the person I am today if my father was a sexist. I would not be one of his senior most executives.
And I would not be working shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers. I would be working for my brothers, if at all. So you know, I think actions ultimately speak louder than words.
My father has 40 years of history of employing women. I think in terms of the nomenclature he uses, the labels...
(UNKNOWN): Bimbo, you know, the words he was (ph) trying...
TRUMP: Yes, I know. People say -- but you know what, he calls men some pretty rough names, too.
BORGER: Complicated relationships with women in business and love. He described it on ABC in 1994.
TRUMP: I create stars. I love creating stars. And to a certain extent, I've done that with Ivana. To a certain extent, I've done that with Marla (ph).
I mean, I've really given a lot of women great opportunity. Unfortunately, after they're a star, the fun is over for me. It's like a creation process.
It's almost like creating a building. It's pretty sad.
BORGER: As for Marla and Donald, they separated in 1997. Right on schedule, according to Jay Goldberg, architect of Trump's Sunset agreement.
GOLDBERG: I mean, I even marked it on the calendar, of course, to be sure that it didn't run over the five-year period. You know, one day, I said to him, you know, you have about a year and a half to go.
KING: Stories about it arriving just before prenup was going to run out time, true?
TRUMP: Well, those stories are inevitable. And today, you have to have a prenup. And I did have a prenup that terminates at a certain level.
BORGER: The divorce finalized in 1999, leaving Marla with a reported $2 million.
Coming up...
(UNKNOWN): I think there's no question that "The Apprentice" took him to a different level of celebrity.
BORGER: The show that made Trump a household name.
(UNKNOWN): I don't think he could successfully run for president without his popularity from "The Apprentice."
(UNKNOWN): He's at 14. He has five more women to go.
BORGER: It was 2002 and reality TV was the hot new thing.
(UNKNOWN): Do you use a lifeline, do you not use a lifeline?
(UNKNOWN): At NBC, we hadn't had a big reality hit. So we were looking for ours.
(UNKNOWN): The first person who refuses to eat a bug loses immunity for their tribe.
BORGER: Mark Burnett, creator of the CBS megahit, "Survivor," pitched his idea to NBC's Jeff Gaspin.
(UNKNOWN): He just kept reiterating, survivor in the jungle of Manhattan.
(UNKNOWN): So the pitch was more about a different form of "Survivor" than it was about, say, Donald Trump.
(UNKNOWN): Yes.
BORGER: In fact, the original pitch for "The Apprentice" wasn't dependent on Trump at all.
GASPIN: The idea was to have a different CEO each season. So Donald was going to be the first.
BORGER: That is if Trump could be convinced to do it.
(UNKNOWN): Did trump have any concerns about whether it would be a success or...
DOWD: Absolutely. He, going into this, was not a fan of reality television. He was very trepiditious and extremely concerned about his image.
BORGER: Gaspin had concerns of his own.
GASPIN: I knew that Donald was famous in New York. But I didn't know how he would translate to the rest of the country. So you know, I was a little nervous about that New York personality.
BORGER: "The Apprentice" could transform Donald Trump into a national celebrity.
(UNKNOWN): There you are, Donald.
(UNKNOWN): Beautiful.
BORGER: But only if middle America could connect with the New York billionaire.
TRUMP: Hello, everybody.
GASPIN: When we got the rough cut for the first episode, it was fun. It was -- it was really entertaining.
BORGER: But it was the surprise toward the end of the show that shattered expectations.
TRUMP: That would be me.
GASPIN: When we got to the boardroom scenes, where Donald, you know, brought all the contestants in and -- and sort of gave them his opinion of their performance, that's when you knew you had something special.
TRUMP: You're sort of a disaster. I don't know what's going on. And don't -- don't take offense.
(UNKNOWN): I don't take offense.
TRUMP: I mean, everyone hates you...
GASPIN: Those boardroom scenes were riveting to the point where they were only supposed to be a couple minutes of each episode. And we ended up expanding them.
TRUMP: You've took so much crap.
BORGER: Expanding them to fill about a third of every show.
TRUMP: She treated you both like dogs.
DOWD (ph): Pitting (ph) the cast members against each other, that was an art I truly think he created. He would be given a sense of who hated whom or who was the hero of the task.
But it was the way that he pushed everybody's buttons. He was the master puppeteer in that boardroom of emotional manipulation.
BORGER: Audiences loved it, especially this.
TRUMP: I have to say, you're fired. You're fired. You're fired.
GASPIN: And then there was, as we nicknamed, the cobra.
TRUMP: You're fired.
GASPIN: It's just a -- it's a, you know, like a cobra snapping. You know, he's very expressive with his hands.
(UNKNOWN): But it wasn't planned.
GASPIN: No, it was not planned.
BORGER: From the moment it premiered, Trump owned "The Apprentice" in more ways than one. To get the billionaire on board, Mark Burnett had given him a hefty stake.
GASPIN: I'd be surprised if he made less than a couple hundred million dollars off of it, over the course, the whole series.
BORGER: It was the success NBC had hoped for.
TRUMP: Hello, everybody.
BORGER: The very first show debuted at number four. And that season ended up averaging 20 million viewers an episode. An average of 28 million tuned in for the finale.
TRUMP: Bill, you're hired.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: Trump followed every tick of the Nielsen (ph) meter.
GASPIN: I've never seen anything in the television industry. I've been in it 20 years who cared as deeply about ratings, positive or negative, as Donald Trump. He would call and he was like, we were number one again.
And even when we weren't number one, he would call and say, we're number one. And I wouldn't correct him because there was no point.
(UNKNOWN): But in his mind?
GASPIN: If you were number one once, you're always number one.
TRUMP: So you had to tell him the bad news...
DOWD (?): Right.
(UNKNOWN): ...that the ratings were dropping.
DOWD (?): Right.
(BORGER): What was that like?
DOWD (?): It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible because he wanted me to continue to say it was the number one show on television, which it was at some point, maybe six seasons ago.
BORGER: The show slumped, but Trump didn't, making event appearances and promoting a revamped version of the show called "Celebrity Apprentice." The longer the show lasted, the more it helped transform the New York builder into a professional brander.
GASPIN: His brand really skyrocketed. And his ability to license his brand really skyrocketed. There was tremendous value to the name, Trump.
BORGER: "The Apprentice" DVD, the computer game, a series of business seminars called "Trump University," along with Trump steaks, Trump water, wine, even vodka. But for Trump, it wasn't enough.
After 14 seasons of "The Apprentice," he was seriously thinking about a promotion from king of reality television to president of the United States.
GASPIN: I think there's no question that "The Apprentice" took him to a different level of celebrity -- no question. I don't think he could successfully run for president without his popularity from "The Apprentice."
TRUMP: Oh, I love you. Look at this. I love you. Thank you very much.
BORGER: We wanted to talk to Donald Trump about success, celebrity and his run for the presidency. But he declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this program.
Ahead, Donald Trump's real-life apprentices.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): He always said before he ever coined the phrase on "The Apprentice" that if we didn't do well, he'd fire us like dogs.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TRUMP: You'll be judged on three criteria, the...
BORGER: Whether on television...
TRUMP: I really have a great family so I just want to thank all of you. BORGER: Or on the campaign trail, these are Donald Trump's true
apprentices. Children, Donald, Jr. Ivanka, and Eric -- all executive vice presidents in their dad's business, all well-educated, well- spoken, and, they say, well-raised.
(BORGER): So you grew up with Donald Trump as your father, what was that like?
TRUMP: Exciting. It's surreal. It's fun. It's energetic. He's a man who's incredibly warm. He's also a man who taught us a lot of discipline and manners and respect and work ethic.
TRUMP: I think I appreciate it much more today as a parent of three young children. I think when I was a teenager, I thought parenting just was something that happens.
And now, I realize how much work goes into raising kids.
BORGER: For Donald Trump, the work of parenting had to fit in with the work of building his business.
(BORGER): You always say your father made time for you on his own terms.
TRUMP: A hundred percent. You know, that's what it was. I mean, but it was fascinating. We got to go see some really cool things. And I think it instilled a lot of the love that we have for our business now.
TRUMP: There was a pay phone at school, and on recess, I'd go there and I'd call collect to his office. I was probably, you know, 10 years old.
(BORGER): You say, hi, this is Ivanka.
TRUMP: Calling collect.
TRUMP: Let me have the calls, please.
TRUMP: And he would pick up the phone every single time. And he'd put me on speakerphone. It didn't matter who was there. It was colleagues.
It was titans of industry. It was heads of countries.
TRUMP: Morning.
BORGER: Donald Trump's work was his life. And the natural message to his children was to love what you do and work hard at it, echoing the advice he got from his father, Fred.
TRUMP: It's probably the most consistent piece of advice he gave in my whole life. He always said to us, you'll never succeed, you'll never be able to compete at the highest level if you don't deeply love what it is that you do.
BORGER: What Trump loved to do was build.
TRUMP: I'd be trailing along as a little kid and I'd be holding his hand as we were walking through, you know, construction sites, whether pouring cement or, you know, we'd be on bulldozers together. And he'd let me, you know, drive through walls that were getting knocked down or whatever.
(BORGER): So it wasn't like he'd take you out to throw the baseball around.
TRUMP: You can get the baseball from other people. I'm not sure how many, you know, fathers will allow you to hop on a D10 and, you know, drive through a wall.
BORGER: So how did children who grew up in Greenwich and on 5th Avenue, went to fancy boarding schools, and winter in Aspen and Palm Beach, not grow into entitled or lazy adults? First, there were ground rules.
TRUMP: When my children were growing up, even when they didn't even know what drinking was, I'd say no alcohol, no cigarettes, and no drugs.
TRUMP: Every day of our life, every morning -- don't drink, don't do drugs, everyone.
TRUMP: Every morning, before school without fail.
TRUMP: I just felt it was important because I've seen so many brilliant young children of wonderful parents destroyed because they drank or they took drugs.
BORGER: They were also expected to earn their own money by working on Trump properties from the bottom up.
TRUMP: My first job was as this dock attendant. I was out on docks. It was nice. And it worked (ph) but you're hooking up boats and you're sort of running around.
It was a lot of fun, making minimum wage and tips.
BORGER: Two years later, the work got tougher.
TRUMP: We started going into some landscaping, utilizing heavy equipment. I'm -- I'm 15 years old and saying (ph) wait a minute, I'm older, I'm worker much harder. There's no longer a tip component.
And so I remember going to him about halfway through the summer being like this, I'm working so much harder. How come I'm still making minimum wage? He's like, well, you didn't ask.
Why would I pay you more than you're willing to work for?
BORGER: That tough Trump attitude had an impact on their personal lives as well.
(BORGER): How about when you brought home a date or a boyfriend?
TRUMP: I was too smart to bring home a date or a boyfriend. I think I brought home my husband. That's it.
(BORGER): He's a little intimidating?
TRUMP: So I -- he saw (ph) my husband when I brought him home. But you know, I -- I was not going to subject boyfriends to the scrutiny of my father or mother, for that matter, unless I was a hundred percent sure.
TRUMP: Their mother, Ivana, was as driven and disciplined as their father.
TRUMP: And my mother, I mean, she's tough. She came from communist Czechoslovakia. I mean, there was no messing around with her either.
She would grab you by the shirt collar. And you know, you -- you wouldn't get away with it. So we were pretty good kids.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Can you express your feelings for us mentioned (ph) before.
TRUMP: We have a great relationship. We've always had a great relationship. I think we'll go out to dinner tonight or something.
BORGER: When their parents split, the highly publicized divorce took its toll.
TRUMP: Special woman.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Where are you going to dinner?
TRUMP: She always will be.
(BORGER): You didn't talk to your dad for a year or so. Can you talk a little bit about why that was and how you felt as a...
TRUMP: Listen, I think for me, I was 12...
(BORGER): ...teenager?
TRUMP: ...right? So...
(BORGER): Oh, 12.
TRUMP: ...I was 12. You know, you think you're a man. You're starting to feel like you are. But you don't really understand the way everything else works.
It was a difficult time, I mean, certainly difficult reading about it in the papers everyday on the way to school.
(BORGER): I read this story about you that when you heard about it, you asked your mom whether you were still going to be Ivanka Trump. Is that a -- is that a true story? TRUMP: Yes, you know, I think I was digesting things and trying to
understand as, you know, a 10 or 11-year-old would the implications to me and my life and my relationship with my parents individually and collectively.
(BORGER): Either of you going to get remarried?
BORGER: They now say the divorce changed the family dynamic.
TRUMP: My siblings and I grew closer together. I developed a stronger relationship with my father as well as with my mother.
(BORGER): You've said that in effect, you were raised by your older brother...
TRUMP: Yes.
(BORGER): ...Don. How so?
TRUMP: Well, you know, Don's my best friend in the world. And Ivanka is my best friend. And then we have a family that's immensely close.
And we all work directly next to each other. We've spent the last 11 years all working, you know, together on the same projects.
BORGER: But working for Trump isn't easy even if it's your last name, too.
TRUMP: I used to love, you know, starting to work in the organization, getting the call at like 5:00 in the morning on a Saturday being like why aren't you in the office?
(BORGER): Five in the morning on a Saturday?
TRUMP: Yes, why aren't you in the office? I'm like I am in the office. He's like, no, you're not because I am. I tried.
(BORGER): What if you don't do the job well?
TRUMP: Well, then you don't last. It's very simple. He has an expectation of excellence.
TRUMP: He always said before he ever coined the phrase on "The Apprentice" that if we didn't do well, he'd fire us like dogs.
TRUMP: You're fired.
Say hello to Don, Jr.
BORGER: Don, Jr.
TRUMP: Eric has been all over the place making speeches.
BORGER: Eric and Ivanka.
TRUMP: I have my daughter, Ivanka. Hey, come on, they want you to walk over, honey. Come on.
BORGER: Along with Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, have become Trump's top campaign lieutenants, unusually prominent roles for family members.
TRUMP: Congratulations, dad, we love you.
BORGER: For much of this year, they've been their father's most effective surrogates.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: It is such an honor to be here for a man I love so, so, so, so, so much.
TRUMP: Good evening. I'm Donald Trump, Jr.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Donald trump is the person to make America great again.
BORGER: Tiffany, Trump's 22-year-old daughter with Marla Maples, also took center stage.
TRUMP: Thank you, all, so much.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: And 10-year-old Barron Trump made a cameo.
(APPLAUSE)
Even if it was past his bedtime. In 2005, Trump married his third wife, a model almost 25 years his junior, Melanija Knavs.
BARRACKS: He adores her. And they have an incredible relationship. He trusts her. And she tells him what she thinks. She is first class.
BORGER: Melania has chosen to largely stay off the campaign trail.
TRUMP: I'm not on the campaign because we have Barron at home. And I'm raising him. He needs a parent at home. I'm teaching him morals and values and preparing him for his life to be an adult.
BORGER: And Trump, is he doing anything differently this time around?
TRUMP: With all of the children, I've always been, I think, a very good father. It was always very important to me. In fact, a lot of people say, my -- my children have done a good job.
And they better keep doing a good job. But I think now as I have gotten older, I think maybe I appreciate life a little bit more.
BORGER: Ahead...
TRUMP: How would you fight is, Mr. Trump, if you are president?
BORGER: Trump unscripted.
TRUMP: I would bomb the -- out of them.
(APPLAUSE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Forty-five years after Donald Trump barreled into Manhattan with limited experience, unlimited ambition and a determination to leave his mark, it was the same story all over again, except this time, he was on an escalator heading into a presidential campaign he was about to turn upside-down.
(BORGER): We need Trump now.
TRUMP: You're right.
BORGER: With an unscripted speech, he began his run as the most unconventional candidate in modern history.
TRUMP: When Mexico sent its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus...
PRIEBUS: Are you all ready to win in 2016?
BORGER: ...was watching.
PRIEBUS: I later called him and said, hey, you know, we've got to kind of work on this language a little bit.
(BORGER): After you called him and you told him to tone it down, he didn't.
PRIEBUS: No, he didn't.
TRUMP: Somebody's doing the raping, Don. Who's going the raping?
BORGER: Instead of toning it down, he amped it up with language...
TRUMP: I would bomb the -- out of them.
(BORGER): Mr. Trump...
BORGER: With his (ph) personal insults.
TRUMP: I never attacked him on his look. And believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there.
BORGER: And even questioning John McCain's heroism.
TRUMP: He's not a war hero.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): He's a war hero.
TRUMP: He is a war hero...
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Five and a half years...
TRUMP: ...he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, OK? I hate to tell you.
BORGER: But the Republican establishment wasn't worried, believing he'd soon alienate voters and implode.
MADDEN: They ultimately believed that the best strategy to take on Donald Trump was to let him self-destruct. One mistake after the next would expose the fact that he wasn't a real candidate.
BORGER: Some of Trump's competitors did try to take him down.
BUSH: That is not a serious kind of candidate.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): I think he's a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Businessman, Donald Trump.
BORGER: But nothing Trump said seemed to hurt him.
TRUMP: Our politicians are stupid.
BORGER: By the first debate, he was in first place in the polls.
TRUMP: We are killing it.
BORGER: And in the fall and months that followed, he stayed there.
TRUMP: No matter where I go, we have these incredible crowds. Something is happening that's amazing.
MADDEN (?): He blocked out the sun from so many of the other candidates because Donald Trump with one tweet or with one press conference or with one interview could drive an entire news cycle for three or four days.
TRUMP: Unbelievable.
BORGER: At his rallies, his audiences only grew.
TRUMP: Do me a favor, take the cameras off me and pan the crowd, OK?
(APPLAUSE)
Go ahead, pan the crowd. Pan it.
PRIEBUS: He represents an earthquake in a box to Washington, D.C., the poke in the eye of what everyone's sick and tired of and frustrated with.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): It's the silent majority, OK? The silent majority -- we're silent because we're working. We're busy. And we're beaten down and we're tired.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): He goes against everything that we're -- we're used to. And that's the change that we need.
(BORGER): Mr. Trump.
BORGER: His strategy stayed the same -- no predictable playbook, limited donor funding...
TRUMP: Wow.
BORGER: ...and plenty of lines crossed.
TRUMP: The press was killing me.
BORGER: Like when Trump described a disabled reporter this way.
TRUMP: Now, you've got to see this guy, oh, I don't know what I said, I -- I don't remember.
MADDEN (?): What worked in Donald Trump's favor was just the sheer volume of controversy. And that just generated such a volume of coverage that it was so hard for the other campaigns to break through and offer a contrast to his candidacy.
He drowned out everybody. He was the only story in town.
BORGER: It was loud but largely unformed, often shifting as the campaign progressed. In December, after an ISIS-inspired shooting in San Bernardino, Trump said this.
TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
BORGER: It was then the Republican establishment started to worry out loud.
RYAN: What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it's not what this country stands for.
MCCONNELL: This suggestion is completely and totally inconsistent with American values.
BORGER: Eventually, Trump recalibrated, stepping back from a religious ban and reaching out to African-Americans.
TRUMP: What do you have to lose?
BORGER: His campaign floated the idea of softening on illegal immigration and added some drama when Trump flew to Mexico to meet with the country's president. TRUMP: We are united by our support for democracy, a great love for
our people.
BORGER: But hours later in Arizona, he doubled down with a tough immigration speech that could have been delivered a year ago.
TRUMP: For those here illegally today who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only -- to return home and apply for re-entry like everybody else. There will be no amnesty.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: One thing that didn't change -- Trump, himself.
TRUMP: You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing. I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?
PRIEBUS: Trump had a brand that he was selling that resonated very strongly, I think, with American people and our voters. And that's a secure America, a safe America, making our country back to the America that it's supposed to be.
BORGER: He's been a phenom since February, winning three of the four first contests...
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Donald Trump.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: ...proving to the establishment, political experience is overrated.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Dr. Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
BORGER: One by one, he laid waste to his opponents.
CHRISTIE (?): I am suspending...
BUSH (?): Suspending...
SANTORUM (?): We will suspend our campaign.
PAUL: I will suspend my campaign for the presidency.
TRUMP: Senators, governors, one after another -- one, two, three -- I love it. Do you love it?
BORGER: In a desperate effort to stop him, the Never Trump movement was born.
ROMNEY: If we, Republicans, choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.
BORGER: Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, criticized everything, from Trump's integrity...
ROMNEY: Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark.
BORGER: ...to the candidate's refusal to release his taxes.
ROMNEY: He will never, ever release his tax returns. He has too much to hide.
BORGER: Every presidential nominee for the last 40 years has released returns except Trump. He insisted he wasn't hiding anything, simply being audited.
(BORGER): You think not releasing your tax returns...
(CROSSTALK)
PRIEBUS: I don't think people care. He represents things that are so much beyond that that it's not going to touch him.
BORGER: Nothing, it seems, could touch him. Trump won more primary votes than any Republican in history and despite talk of a contested convention, on May 3, his closest challenger bowed out of the race, but not before lighting into Trump.
CRUZ: This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. The man is utterly amoral.
BORGER: But Cruz ceded the race to Trump and about 90 minutes later, Reince Priebus tweeted a message to his party.
PRIEBUS: The Republican National Committee just now has said that they expect Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee.
(BORGER): Why did you decide to do that?
PRIEBUS: Because I wanted to make people see that you need to get your head wrapped around the fact that this is the likely presumptive nominee now. Start thinking that way now.
BORGER: Translation, get on board, but not everybody was.
RYAN: I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now.
BORGER: Ahead, the man behind the curtain.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
BORGER: With the nomination all but in hand, Donald Trump's campaign team promised the Republican establishment that they would soon see a candidate behaving like a president.
TRUMP: What a crowd.
(APPLAUSE) TRUMP: What a crowd.
BORGER: Instead...
TRUMP: I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump -- a hater of Donald Trump, a hater.
BORGER: Trump decided, as usual, to go his own way.
TRUMP: The judge has been very unfair, has not done a good job.
BORGER: Attacking the federal judge presiding over two cases, claiming Trump University was a scam that preyed on those who wanted to get rich like Trump.
TRUMP: At Trump University, we teach success.
Different political story this morning surrounding Donald Trump is that he's not backing down from his attacks (ph), telling his top surrogates in a conference call that he won't apologize.
TRUMP: We're in front of a very hostile judge.
BORGER: And igniting a firestorm because the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, an American, born in Indiana, was of Mexican descent.
TRUMP: He's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.
I've been treated very unfairly by this judge. Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage. I'm building a wall, OK? I'm building a wall.
I'm trying to keep business out of Mexico. Mexico is like -- there's nothing...
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): But he's American. He's an American.
TRUMP: He's of Mexican heritage.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): If you are saying he can't do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?
TRUMP: I don't think so at all.
BORGER: But others said, yes, it was...
RYAN: I regret those comments.
BORGER: ...including Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.
RYAN: Find me a person who can't do the job because of the race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.
GINGRICH: This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made. I think it's inexcusable. BORGER: The Trump campaign tried to calm nervous Republicans by
firing controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, elevating veteran operative, Paul Manafort, and picking a conservative running mate...
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): The next vice president of the United States...
BORGER: Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
(APPLAUSE)
PENCE: I guess he was just looking for some balance on the ticket.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: We wanted to question Trump about Judge Curiel and other campaign choices. But he declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this program.
PRIEBUS: Welcome to the 2016 Republican National Convention.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: At the convention in Cleveland, Republicans railed against Hillary.
PRIEBUS: You can kiss your gun rights goodbye if she ever finds her way into the White House.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: And rallied for Trump as the man to rescue America from a dangerous world.
TRUMP: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: Trump's polls went up. It seemed he had turned a corner.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Donald Trump.
BORGER: But then the father of a Muslim-American army captain who had been killed in Iraq spoke at the democratic convention.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?
(APPLAUSE)
I will gladly lend you my copy. You have sacrificed nothing, and no one...
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: Trump challenged the Gold Star parents. He told ABC he too had sacrificed.
TRUMP: I think I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.
BORGER: And then he said this.
TRUMP: If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say. She probably -- maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say.
BORGER: But it was grief, not religion, that kept her silent.
(BORGER): I can say that my religion or my family or my culture never stopped me saying whatever I want to say.
(BORGER): He showed absolutely no empathy or compassion for their terrible loss.
BORGER: Reaction from leading Republicans was swift and harsh.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): That family just deserves respect and acknowledgement of the huge sacrifice they made, and that's it.
BLITZER: Donald Trump is getting an earful from top Republicans, the veterans of foreign wars and Gold Star families.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle denouncing Trump for attacking this Gold Star family.
BORGER: His poll numbers dropped, leading to another campaign shakeup. And then, well over a year after he entered the race, Donald Trump did something he'd never done before -- expressed regret.
TRUMP: Sometimes, in the heat of debate, and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words, or you say the wrong thing. I have done that.
(APPLAUSE)
And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly, where it may have caused personal pain.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: No specific apologies, just some remorse.
TRUMP: Thank you. And god bless you.
BORGER: A completely unexpected turn and probably not the last in what has been a long Trump courtship with the presidency. It began as far back as 1987, when ABC's Barbara Walters asked him about it.
WALTERS: If you could be appointed president and didn't have to run, would you like to be president?
TRUMP: If you could be appointed -- I'm not sure that that would be the same ballgame (ph). I mean, we (ph) seeking -- it's the quest that really -- I believe it's the hunt that I believe that I love.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): What makes you think you'd be a viable candidate for president?
TRUMP: Well, the polls are saying it.
BORGER: For years after...
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Would the Donald rather be emperor or president?
BORGER: ...he publicly flirted with a run and got plenty of attention by taking on the current occupant of the oval office.
TRUMP: Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? And the fact is, if he wasn't born in this country, he shouldn't be the president of the United States.
BORGER: But it wouldn't be until last June that Trump decided he was ready to make a real run himself.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): He had the ability and the courage and he practiced the art of celebrity-ship.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): He's got power. He kind of has it all. So I think he was testing, saying how good am i? Where else can I go with this?
What new canvas can I draw on that I have not yet conquered?
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): I don't think he is running for president because he ran out of deals to do. I think he's running for president because he actually thinks that there's no better qualified person on earth.
He was going to go for the top job, if he was going to go for any political office.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE): Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump...
BORGER: Trump draws his energy from the crowd.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: The adulation.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: The attention.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: His success has come largely without a script.
TRUMP: No telemprompter.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGER: And without a net.
TRUMP: Look at all these guys, paparazzi. Look at these.
BORGER: He's most comfortable in the spotlight.
(BORGER): How important is publicity to Donald Trump?
BORGER: Well, I think he could do without blood, but he can't do without publicity.
(BORGER): Oxygen, perhaps?
BORGER: No, it's more than oxygen. It's more than blood. I mean, he lives with it. He absolutely lives with it. That's what he is.
Listen, he's got his name on everything. It's on a plane. It's on a hotel. It's on everything.
TRUMP: Trump steaks are the best you can give.
BORGER: That's what he is. He loves it. He lives it.
BORGER: Now, his name is at the top of the ticket. And the test is whether someone who has flown under his own banner for 70 years can win the White House and lead another brand, the Republican Party.
(BORGER): So is this now the party of Trump?
PRIEBUS: You know, I don't know why people use that. I think -- I find that to be...
(BORGER): You don't like that?
PRIEBUS: ...very off-putting.
(BORGER): OK.
PRIEBUS: And it wouldn't be -- it wouldn't be the party of Bush. It's -- you know, it's not the party of Romney. We exist -- the nominees come and go.
TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
BARRACK: I think one of the criticisms that people have, you know (ph) there's no organization. There's no team (ph). He doesn't have points of view.
By the way, all those things (ph) are true, which is why he's such an amazingly viable candidate. The man is the most adaptable person known to mankind.
BORGER: And trying to adapt to a political fight that is about something much larger than himself.
(APPLAUSE)
An election that has become the battle of his life, in which he is determined to be a winner.
TRUMP: We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again.
