A decade before he launched his presidential bid, Donald Trump was a reality TV sensation in search of a new gimmick for the upcoming season of The Apprentice. In the summer of 2005, he thought he had found it: pit black contestants against white ones in the televised battle for boardroom supremacy.

Trump floated the prospect of racially segregated Apprentice teams during his short-lived syndicated radio show on July 11, 2005.

Explaining to listeners that he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the show’s most recent season, Trump said he was mulling “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African-Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

The idea — which he had also raised on Howard Stern’s show a couple months earlier, according to a 2005 Entertainment Weekly article — drew an avalanche of coverage, commentary, and question-mark headlines at the time.

“Will next Apprentice play race card?” asked UPI.

“Will The Apprentice become a battle of the races?” mused MSNBC.com.