In 2016, Donald Trump would tell you that he does not, in fact, have a “woman problem,” as the media calls his colored history with the female sex. The presumptive Republican nominee skewers reporters who poke at his past. His daughter, Ivanka, consistently touts how many women he’s promoted through the ranks of his Trump Organization. His current wife, Melania, explains how her husband treats women and men equally, and his ex-wife, Ivana, claims the Donald is not a misogynist because he put her to work for his company.
But in 1994, Trump seems to have created a “woman problem” for himself. In an interview with ABC’s Primetime Live, recently resurfaced by The New York Daily News, he laid out how he felt about women in the workplace—particularly women to whom he is married—and the sadness he feels once his female protégées reach their own level of success.
“I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” he said at the time, offering up what he called an “educational lesson” to viewers. It was especially treacherous for him in his first marriage, when he appointed Ivana to run his casino in Atlantic City. What the infamously loudmouthed man could not stand was overhearing her on a business call with someone, raising her voice. “I’d say, ‘I really don’t want my wife shouting like that. I really don’t want that,’” he said. “The softness disappeared. . . . She became an executive, not a wife.”
In practice, this would mean his wife would shirk her womanly duties in the home in order to perform her business obligations at the office, and that was a consequence the Donald could not stomach. “I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”
Donald certainly does not deserve to be sent through the roof just because his wife has career ambitions. Have a heart, Mrs. Trumps. Can’t you see all the man has done for all of you?
Donald saw it. That is why he told ABC that he created stars out of Ivana and Marla Maples, to whom he was married at the time. “I love creating stars,” he said. “I like that. Unfortunately, after they’re a star, the fun is over for me.” Why would that be? Wouldn’t he revel in their fame, bathe within the spotlight he had pointed at them? He explained, as only a billionaire developer with a woman problem could: “It’s like a creation process. It’s almost like creating a building. It’s pretty sad.”
