A Blast From the Radio Past, Vol. 1: Donald Trump

In this week's Rule Breaker Investing podcast, Motley Fool co-founders David and Tom Gardner and producer Mac Greer are mining the radio vault and revisiting some clips from their old radio shows.

In this segment, they play a 1999 clip of the Gardner brothers speaking with Donald Trump, who described the money advice he gave his daughter Ivanka.

A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on April 11, 2018.

Mac Greer: So, yeah, I started in 1998, and in 1999 on our then AM radio show we interviewed what I would call a successful...

Tom Gardner: This is like Luis Tiant. Line of sight.

Greer: ... successful real estate developer who... Very active in Manhattan. Becoming more of a television personality.

David Gardner: I have to add that I had literally forgot that we had interviewed this particular person.

Greer: We had.

D. Gardner: I'm so glad you went deep!

Greer: I did go deep...

D. Gardner: ... into the wide and deep vault of audio gold.

Greer: And there's a backstory to our then interview with Donald Trump and it was that the stock was a short, correct?

D. Gardner: Indeed, yes. And it's something that I've covered before on this podcast and "I Own the Water." You can go back and google it. It's probably one of my more enjoyable episodes to put together where I told the story of us shorting the Donald. But Mac, I truly had forgotten that we had him on the radio show a year or two later.

T. Gardner: I had, too. I think we had John McCain on a number of times...

Greer: We did.

T. Gardner: ... and it would be an incredible Rule Breakers podcast later this summer to have the president and Senator McCain on. At the same time.

D. Gardner: Dick Cheney.

Greer: That would be a doozy. And Elvira.

T. Gardner: And Elvira.

D. Gardner: The Mistress of the Dark definitely made multiple Motley Fool Radio Show appearances.

T. Gardner: She did make a number of appearances.

D. Gardner: I mean, that is going to be coming, probably, Blast from the Radio Past, Vol. II.

T. Gardner: I think I recall that she was an incredibly shrewd businessperson.

Greer: Yes.

D. Gardner: Nice.

T. Gardner: She knew what she was doing all the way through in a beautiful, very Foolish and fun way.

Greer: She bought the rights to that character.

T. Gardner: I can't believe that that wasn't part of today's. That just shows how much there is.

Greer: I'm disappointed in myself.

T. Gardner: Nah!

Greer: But I appreciate your gratitude.

D. Gardner: Actually, half an hour before we taped Mac said, "Guys, I've got it down to 26 clips. I know we need to get it down to about half that."

T. Gardner: He was crying. By the way, he was crying when he said that.

Greer: It's tough.

T. Gardner: His glasses were at an angle.

D. Gardner: He put in a lot of time. He really has, and we appreciate that, Mac.

Greer: Which kid do you love the most?

D. Gardner: All right, so let's hear the clip.

Greer: So, this is our interview with Donald Trump from 1999.

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D. Gardner: OK, in closing, one thing we try to do, here, at The Motley Fool, is educate young people about money. Now, you have a daughter, Ivanka, who we believe is a fan of The Motley Fool.

Donald Trump: That is true.

D. Gardner: OK. What is the single biggest lesson about money that you try to teach your daughter? And one quick follow-up after that. Since my brother Tom is single, any chance you could set Tom up with Ivanka?

Trump: Well, I don't know if I could trust Tom with her, but I will tell you. She is a big fan of Motley Fool and the reason I called you originally, a few months ago, was because you guys were killing me, and nobody was talking about it but my daughter and her friends. So, that means you have a young, bright audience and I had to straighten that out because I couldn't let my daughter hear how dumb I was. All right?

But I think what I'd really like to tell Ivanka is to be very conservative. Fortunately, she's in a position where she doesn't have to be a wild risk-taker as I really had to be when I was building up this company. And I'd like to see her -- and my other children, for that matter -- be very conservative. And I'm sure that your brother, Tom, would make a wonderful candidate for Ivanka, but maybe we should wait a couple of years.

D. Gardner: OK. I think that's probably really good advice.

T. Gardner: She's well out of my league, Donald. I apologize for my brother.

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D. Gardner: And that... And that is a pretty great clip. In fact, Tom, I wanted to bring that one out just briefly to celebrate because Tom, you are turning 50 this week.

T. Gardner: Five zero.

D. Gardner: You're keeping it really low profile, and this is just a small thing on this podcast, but I asked Mac to go back and grab a fun Tom Gardner clip and you've got our president talking about Ivanka. But seriously, thank you for not just being 50 years a great brother...

T. Gardner: I'm glad I was born. I'm glad I was born.

D. Gardner: ... but in this week's context, thank you for being such a wonderful co-host for all those years and, of course, co-partner in our business today.

T. Gardner: How many years of radio programming did we do, Mac?

D. Gardner: Seven.

Greer: Yeah, seven. Three on AM, and four on NPR. So, if you do the math...

T. Gardner: Then we had the PBS Special together...

Greer: Three hundred a show.

T. Gardner: ... that we worked on.

Greer: The moneymaking, life-changing special.

T. Gardner: What, in your opinion, was the single lowest moment for us as a team? Like what did we get through? Tough times. Hard times. We're on the road somewhere.

D. Gardner: The right way to answer this is, guys, I can't talk about the lowest, but I'll talk about the 37th lowest moment.

Greer: Yeah. We had some shows and interviews that didn't always work. There was some brotherly discord. There was some discord with your producer.

T. Gardner: There were times where David and I would be arguing. I remember this...

Greer: It's true.

T. Gardner: ... and one of us would just go silent for like seven minutes on the show.

Greer: And it was a live show.

D. Gardner: I mean, you know. You're there with your brother.

T. Gardner: That's right. It's true. You're working through things.

D. Gardner: You betcha.