The story of Italy’s former Prime Minister shows why Donald Trump could be America’s next president.

In trying to make sense of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, commentators have likened him to a number of politicians of the past. Not knowing how to contain his rise, his bitterest of opponents have compared him to Hitler, or to Serbian ultra-nationalists. Of course these comparisons don’t need to be entertained by any sensible person and only serve to damage those who oppose Donald Trump’s campaign, rather than Trump himself.

But a much more realistic comparison that has been made is with Italy’s bunga bunga former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. When Berlusconi came to power in 1994, Italy had emerged from a corruption scandal the likes of which had never been seen before or since in the West. More than half the Italian parliament had been indicted for criminal offences.

Berlusconi had no political experience and had risen to fame through his ownership of a huge media empire and AC Milan, one of the country’s largest football clubs, which he saved from bankruptcy. Like Donald Trump he had previously worked with politicians from all sides of the political spectrum to further his own interests, before effectively leading the right of Italian politics for a generation.

Clearly Trump has made the same calculation as Berlusconi, that if the left are the keenest advocates of the kind of political correctness despised by so many of his countrymen, in particular white males, then the right is the most fertile breeding ground for his bombastic and masculine style of leadership.

To get to power, Berlusconi made alliances with the Alleanza Nazionale, who at the time were comprised mainly of fascist nostalgists, and the Lega Nord, an anti-immigration party who wanted the North of Italy to become independent from the ‘lazy’ South. This is probably the same tactic that led Donald Trump to hesitate in criticising the KKK. It was a clear message that the worst people on your side of the political spectrum are always better than the best people on the other side, and if you are willing to shun potential voters because of sensitivities that should really only apply to the left (or the Democrats) then you are little more than Quislings.

While the Republican party establishment obsessed over the hammering Barack Obama gave them among minority voters, Trump realised that he was never likely to be successful with those demographics, or at least that the best chance of being successful with groups like blacks and Hispanics was to be successful with other groups and wait for them to jump on the bandwagon. After all, if for example, Hispanics wanted an amnesty on illegal immigration, they would surely vote for the real thing offered by the Democrats rather than the flip-flopping of Republican rival Marco Rubio.

On Muslims, Berlusconi’s statements in the past have differed little from Donald Trump’s. In 2001, Berlusconi said: “We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and – in contrast with Islamic countries – respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance.”

What bitter opponents of Trump would understand if they looked at Berlusconi’s political career is that neither man means half the things he says. Trump will not ban Muslim immigration, but his supporters don’t necessarily expect him to. Just hearing him say such ‘terrible things’ and listening to the disgust of his politically correct opponents is enough.

Two moments from Berlusconi’s political career demonstrate this. One was in 2003 when he said Martin Schulz, then a Socialist MEP and now president of the European Parliament, was like a Nazi concentration camp guard, which fuelled outrage in Germany (before the Greek crisis, world leaders simply did not talk to Germans using that language). Schulz is an establishment politician of the worst kind. A politically correct proponent of European integration who would never be popular enough to enter the German parliament but has a completely inflated sense of his own importance.

And the second moment came in the run up to the 2006 election when he ran against left wing opponent Romano Prodi, who was responsible for Italy joining the euro in a previous spell as Prime Minister. “Prodi’s euro has screwed us all!” railed Berlusconi as he suggested a dual circulation with the lira, Italy’s previous currency. Despite losing that election, Berlusconi would come to power again numerous times, including during the euro crisis, and do precisely nothing to change Italy’s currency.

So in a nutshell, here is what Italy can teach us. First of all, outrageous statements may well help Donald Trump become president, but his supporters shouldn’t actually expect him to do what he has promised. Equally, his opponents should realise he won’t have to. If he continues to say what no other politician dares to say and they are unable to get over how offended they are and land a knockout punch on key issues of substance, then Trump could, in his own words, ‘win so much he will get bored of winning’.