I've read that Trump's fortune, before he became a TV celebrity with The Apprentice, was actually less than he would have had if he had simply taken all of the money he inherited and put it in a savings account at a bank. Essentially he wasn't a very good investor.
He wasn't a TV celebrity though. He was more tabloid fodder.
And no, he didn't make it from the show directly, but the show made his brand name a lot more valuable, and made it a lot easier for him to make money from his businesses. And his true worth is probably far less than that. A lot of people claim in the $150m-$250m range. It's hard to estimate a guy whose worth is primarily not in equities.
It has been a running joke in Forbes -- since the 80's -- that he thinks they've underestimated his net worth. I think the issue is not that he doesn't own equities -- they estimate the fortunes of Bloomberg, the Koches, the [Fidelity] Johnsons, etc. just fine. The problem is that he's so leveraged: being off by 10% on his assets might mean being off by 50% on his equity.
