Trump's disastrous shutdown is a perfect example of 'inept dealmaking' that's defined his career: biographer

President Donald Trump seems to have cornered himself when it comes to keeping the federal government shut down -- and Trump biographer Timothy O'Brien says that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Writing in Bloomberg, O'Brien says that Trump's inept handling of shutdown negotiations with Congressional Democrats confirms all the bad qualities that he uncovered while researching Trump's business career.

"Trump, in reality, was never a peerless or even a particularly skillful dealmaker and many of the most significant business transactions he engineered imploded," O'Brien explains. "In Trump’s professional life, his inept dealmaking often came home to roost in unmanageable debts and serial bankruptcies."

O'Brien says that Trump lacks the necessary attention to detail to hammer out good agreements and he doesn't have the "maturity" or "patience" needed to enact a long-term vision.

"This... is who the president is," O'Brien writes. "He’s focused on fostering his own, carnivalesque image, and he has little real interest in policy outcomes. And he’s been here before. In 1988, he overpaid in a deal for the Plaza Hotel because he was irrationally enamored of the property. A few years later he lost it in bankruptcy. Around the same time, he bungled negotiations for another project that would have made him a transformative figure in New York real estate because he couldn’t exercise the restraint, foresight and financial discipline needed to get the deal done."

Read the whole piece here.