The late Italian populist Silvio Berlusconi, a real estate and media tycoon, derived most of his substantial support from the country’s southlands. Its denizens adored his brio. They rallied around his portrayal of Rome as a political capital that stole from the people, they applauded his baiting of all enemies as communists, and, thanks to them, he lorded over Italy for more than two decades and counted Vladimir Putin among his buddies. Those men who could operate outside the law he clutched to his bosom, but even he knew to stop short of renaming concert halls and gulfs. He understood at least the crassness and vulgarity of such actions. Donald Trump, admired by some Italians in the Berlusconi vein, does not. And the existing ‘last laugh’ now belongs to him.