“The Confidence Man,” a swift, brutal overview of Mr. Trump’s business career, argues that he had been doing the same thing with his image for decades: He wasn’t a business titan so much as he played one on TV.

The film, directed by Fisher Stevens (“Bright Lights”), is the last episode of a six-part anthology, “Dirty Money,” from the filmmaker Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), arriving Friday. The installments range from an infuriating look at payday lending to an offbeat story about Canadian maple syrup cartels.

The common thread is the abuse of trust. And “The Confidence Man” argues that the problem goes all the way to the top.

Mr. Stevens’s narrative starts with Trump Tower, the gleaming metonym Mr. Trump hung his name on in brass letters. The splashy project landed him on talk shows and magazine covers as the photogenic shorthand for Reagan-age materialism.

That served his other big 1980s construction effort — his media image, for which he poured the foundation in the New York tabloids. The gossip columnist A. J. Benza recalls Mr. Trump as a regular source, offering juicy tips with only one condition: that he be referred to in print as a billionaire.