In Berlusconi’s words: A lifetime of offensive quotes and gaffes
The tycoon and former Italian prime minister has insulted several world leaders, including Obama and Merkel, often insulting marginalized groups.
Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who passed away after several bouts of ill health, was known outside politics for his sex and decency scandals and business empires.
A flamboyant figure to the end, he was rarely out of the headlines.
Here are some of the 86-year-old’s memorable quotes and gaffes:
‘Only Napoleon did more than I did’: On politics
“I am the Jesus Christ of politics,” Berlusconi told his supporters in 2006, according to Italian media. “I am a patient victim. I’ve put up with everyone. I sacrifice myself for everyone.”
That same year he also compared himself to the French leader Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Only Napoleon has done more than me,” he told an Italian TV talk show. “But I’m definitely taller.”
‘Putin sent me 20 bottles of vodka’: About Russia and Ukraine
Despite anger in the West over Russia’s war in Ukraine, Berlusconi stood by his old friend President Vladimir Putin in October, saying: “Putin sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a very sweet letter for my birthday. I replied with bottles of Lambrusco and an equally sweet letter.”
Separately, Berlusconi also reportedly admonished Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni from meeting with Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy after blaming Kiev for the Russian invasion.
Provoke and insult world leaders
During a group photo at an informal European Union summit in Spain in 2002, Berlusconi held up two fingers behind the head of Spain’s foreign minister, Josep Pique, in the traditional Latin gesture for cuckold.
In 2005, Berlusconi said he had tried to charm Finland’s president, Tarja Halonen, into giving up her country’s claim to host the new European Food Safety Authority.
“I had to use all my playboy tactics, even though they haven’t been used in a while,” he said.
In 2010, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also insulted by Berlusconi, according to Italian newspapers, when he called her an “unf******e lardarse”.
He also told German legislator and Social Democrat Martin Schulz: “There is a man in Italy who is making a film about the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to introduce you for the role of kapo. You would be perfect.”
A kapo was a concentration camp inmate who was given privileges to oversee prisoner work gangs.
Racist joke
Interactions between the Italian leader and Barack Obama began when the US senator won the 2008 presidential election and Berlusconi called the victor “handsome, young and also tanned.”
Offensive in a crisis
Visiting survivors of an earthquake in the central Italian region of Abruzzo in 2009, Berlusconi said of the people in emergency tents: “They should think of it as a weekend camping trip.”
Disturbing Muslims and Jews
In 2001, Berlusconi upset the Muslim world when he said that the West “must be aware of the superiority of our civilization”.
He said that while the West has a value system “that has given people widespread prosperity in the countries that embrace it and guarantee respect for human rights and religion, … this respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries”.
In 2010, the Vatican’s official newspaper condemned the Italian politician after he made an anti-Semitic “joke”.
Homophobia
At a motorcycle show in Milan in 2010, he said it was “better being a pretty girl than being gay”.
“As always, I work uninterrupted, and if I occasionally look a pretty girl in the face, it’s better to like pretty girls than to be gay,” he said.
Football and misogyny
Berlusconi owned the Italian football club AC Milan from 1986 to 2017.
In 2006, when Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko went to play for Chelsea, Berlusconi blamed Shevchenko’s wife.
Shevchenko’s departure? It was neither wanted by us nor caused by the will of the player. He had to submit to his wife’s wishes. And we know that women are often like kapos to whom we can’t say no.’
In 2022, the Italian leader told players on his Monza football team he would “bring a bus of whores into the dressing room” if they managed to beat a top Serie A rival.
When AC Milan lost to Bologna in the 2008-09 season, he commented on the weight of the club coach Carlo Ancelotti, saying: “Ancelotti is chubby enough already. He has eaten so many panettons [type of Italian bread]. At least he can still be there this year.”