I'm close friends with some of President Trump's former business partners. Without getting too specific, they worked with him on a handful of deals back in his Apprentice days. Relatively small deals to start with then bigger ones as time went by.
Independently of each other, they've all said variations of the same thing: honest, above-board, very lucrative deals, would do it again tomorrow if they could, etc.
Others of my friends were involved in Trump deals as contractors rather than direct partners. Same thing although they have more experience with him overall. Same thing. Good deals, never missed a chance to work with him when they could, honest, so on and so forth.
None of these people are what you used to be called Tea Party Patriots. They're all broadly East Coast liberals who had no reason to love or to hate Trump. If my friends would've had a negative experience with him, there wouldn't have been a reason to lie about how wonderful he is. Because I've heard them trash talk plenty of other prominent East Coast businessmen. But they all mostly enjoyed their dealings with Trump.
Honestly, their experiences with Trump count far more to me than some overpaid shill journalist on CNN or wherever repeating the words his paymasters have given him.