Amid all the self-made myths about Donald Trump, none is more fantastic than Trump the moneymaker, the New York tycoon who has enjoyed a remarkably successful business career. In reality, Mr. Trump was a walking disaster as a businessman for much of his life. This is not just my opinion. Warren Buffett said as much this past week.

Between 1985 and 1991, working mainly for The Daily News and The Wall Street Journal, I covered Mr. Trump’s travails and interviewed him dozens of times. On several occasions he threatened to sue me, though he never did. But he didn’t hide his opinion of me. In “Trump: The Art of the Comeback,” his 1997 book, he wrote: “Of all the writers who have written about me, probably none has been more vicious than Neil Barsky of The Wall Street Journal.”

Since leaving journalism in 1993, I have been a Wall Street real estate analyst and a hedge fund manager. I have studied how businesses thrive and why they fail. Mr. Trump’s political rise has been maddening for me to watch, and I sometimes feel like the character played by Kevin Bacon in the movie “Diner” who screams the right answers to a TV quiz show as the contestants get them wrong.

“The issue isn’t that he’s crass,” I want to shout. “It’s that he’s a bad businessman!”

At 70, Mr. Trump is 12 years older than I am. As I watched his career soar in the 1980s and the inordinate amount of press attention he attracted, I was struck by two things: His list of real estate accomplishments were minuscule compared with those of more successful New York developers who garnered far less publicity, and he lied a lot. He made up the prices he was getting for his condominiums, the value of bids he had turned down for various properties and his prospects for luring corporate tenants to his buildings.

And, of course, he lied about his wealth.

Doll Is Mine wrote:Trump can cause a lot of trouble for them if he's screwed with.

Paul Nehlen ‏@pnehlen
Attending the @RealDonaldTrump rally in Green Bay tonight in support of our party's nominee and his agenda! #MAGA #WI01 #ElectNehlen

Jimmy ‏@JimmyPrinceton
Jimmy Retweeted Paul Nehlen
If only there was a term for sitting in a corner and watching your lover embrace another.

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:So Paul LePage has been helping Trump "maintain discipline"

Dear lord this couldn't get funnier

MoBettle wrote:If Trump is just "wind turbines are killing all the birds" crazy and not "picking fights with Gold Star families" crazy for a while this race will become close again in 2-3 weeks, if only because the media needs it.