Donald Trump Is America’s Silvio Berlusconi

This bull in the American china shop acts like a copy of the cavalier Berlusconi, who supplied him with a complete populist manual.

America’s political analysts have asked themselves for weeks how to best explain the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. Is he is a right-wing politician like the ones Europe is suffering at the moment, or a political sui generis, a further expression of American exceptionalism? One does not need to go far back into history on Google or Facebook to understand that Trump is by no means unique. In this case, Italy owns the copyright. Trump happens to be the XXL-format — an over-the-top version of Berlusconism.

Older people will perhaps remember how it was when Silvio Berlusconi went into politics at the beginning of the ‘90s. At the time, the Italian political class was completely discredited, the “clean hands” of the district attorneys had uncovered a network of corruption and every few days a respected public deputy or minister wandered into jail.

And then the businessman Berlusconi surfaced; he promised that in the future, Italy would perform as successfully as his company. The people had not only grown tired of backroom politicians (to whom, however, Berlusconi owed his television empire), they also wanted someone to finally govern properly. [They wanted] a successful person, someone who had already been lucky.

Much of what one hears in America today about Trump is similar to what the Italians in the ‘90s said about Berlusconi. “He is already a rich man who doesn’t need any more money, so no one can bribe him,” was one piece of wisdom. Trump sells himself, as Berlusconi once did, as someone who violates customs of the political class and increasingly speaks for the people.

Both lean toward misogynistic jokes that create knee-slapping camaraderie among male voters — those [male voters] who see themselves surrounded by prohibitive political correctness, and who do not hesitate to mirror the self-confident macho man who arbitrarily defies social etiquette. He simply forges his own path. And if it is bombastic and tasteless, so be it.

In the overpowering egos of Trump and Berlusconi, their fairy tale wealth and their pleasure in the violation of rules is flashy, like that of the autocrats of the Renaissance, who dominated whole regions with gold and violence. And let’s face it: Many men occasionally yearn to break free from the irksome shackles of civilization, to have the courage to live out their own desires and inclinations as outrageously as Berlusconi and Trump do.

Affairs Strengthen the Effect

Their history with women and affairs only strengthens the effect. This is not to say that their rise is the fault of frustrated men, bored employees of a midlife crisis. In his best times, Berlusconi felt he attracted many female voters due to his winning smile, as well as his wealth and his access to the stars and starlets of the film and television industry.

However, Trump receives not quite as much approval from conservative women as from Republican men. But despite his sexist remarks, he is far ahead of his Republican rivals in the polls among women voters.

Berlusconi and Trump are illusionists who have already sold dreams: first as real estate entrepreneurs, then in television and, finally, through politics. Those who voted in the ‘90s for Berlusconi and find Trump good today, actually want to get back at the political class and shock the establishment — and at the same time be entertained. Because in the ‘90s, Berlusconi was what Trump is today — the best show in town.

And many voters have taken light pleasure in seeing the slick and tough politicians squirm, as they struggle to grasp how they should behave toward someone who violates the script they once had to learn. It makes them look overambitious and annoying, like schoolboys with their top ratings and [habits of] conformity. Trump is like the playboy of the family, appearing drunk at the wedding and flinging truth at the heads of hypocritical relatives. Part of the fun is also that the media and intellectual class are almost as shocked as the political one, and they are desperately looking for explanations as to why people are suddenly so rude and so corruptible.

Control Freaks at Work

The similarities between Berlusconi and Trump extend to amazing detail. Both are also known as control freaks. One of Berlusconi’s employees at his television [company] said that he even checked the camera settings in the studio: “If he had had boobs, he would have been the announcer.” Donald Trump is notorious for shooting tweets late at night against political opponents. And just as Trump’s campaign has paid for itself, Berlusconi has over the years funded his own party.

Now Americans are a long way from electing Trump as president. But Berlusconi should be a warning to them, even if they have good reasons to be dissatisfied with the political and elite classes. The “nonpolitical,” those who offer themselves as saviors, make matters even worse. The Italians must have realized that Berlusconi did not govern the country any better [than a politician].

Instead, he spent considerable political energies on protecting his empire and himself from prosecution. Berlusconi had seriously damaged the political culture in the country, and left the Italian economy in far worse condition than when he had taken office.

In contrast to Berlusconi, Trump is only a small fish, as the roles of the U.S. economy and the media landscape are nowhere near comparable in importance. Because of this, however, his ego seems to be even more overinflated than Berlusconi’s. Trump says that he quickly loses interest in things and searches for new challenges. In the White House, he would probably soon be bored with the tedious drudgery of governance once the kick of an election victory had subsided. It was the same with Berlusconi, who looked for extramarital affairs and wild sex parities in the office — with known consequences for Italy.