Opinion | Before Trump, There Was Berlusconi

Mr. Berlusconi’s tricks and oddities to elude his critics rivaled, perhaps even exceeded, those of Mr. Trump. The hush money Mr. Trump allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels seems almost mundane compared with the time Mr. Berlusconi called the police claiming that Karima el-Mahroug, a 17-year-old guest of one of his infamous “bunga bunga” parties who had been arrested, was a niece of the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. To whatever charge, Mr. Berlusconi always had an answer.

Mr. Berlusconi’s conspicuous fortune, estimated at $6.8 billion and comprising dozens of companies operating in media, finance, sports and real estate, was the bedrock of his political project. He preached his own version of the prosperity gospel, arousing hope in Italians disheartened by a corrupt political class and economic stagnation. Two decades before Mr. Trump appealed to Americans left behind by globalization, Mr. Berlusconi was capturing the imagination of the “forgotten men” of Italy by promising new jobs and tax cuts.

An oxymoronic figure, Mr. Berlusconi preached “ethical anarchy” while giving succor to the far right, tickling people’s passions with the exploits of his soccer team and surrounding himself with an ever-changing court of advisers, friends, lackeys and acolytes who hoped to take advantage of his proverbial generosity. By day, he garnered votes from the working class. At night, he invited his guests to admire an artificial volcano erupting real lapilli in the boundless garden of his oligarch-friendly, 126-room villa on the Sardinian coast.

Because Mr. Berlusconi never separated the personal from the political, his fall happened on both fronts simultaneously. Relentlessly grilled by his political opponents for trying to bend laws to his own advantage, he spiraled into an increasingly rowdy lifestyle. His name became universally associated with the sex parties he insisted on defining as “elegant dinners.” When in 2009 Mr. Berlusconi picked candidates for the European Parliament from among the female guests of these gatherings, his second wife, Veronica Lario, publicly protested against this “shamelessly tacky” behavior and filed for divorce.

Two years later, a letter from the European Central Bank ended his career as prime minister, and a sentence for tax fraud soon pushed him out of the Senate. But he wasn’t done yet. Acquitted three times in trials related to his sex parties, he was readmitted to Parliament in 2022. Despite waning electoral support for his party, Forza Italia, he remained a major figure in Italian politics, most recently playing a pivotal role in the formation of the current government. His ability to ride a roller coaster of setbacks and comebacks can be defined only as Trumpian, or perhaps Mr. Trump’s resilience is Berlusconian.