[During the trip, Mr. Trump stopped by Fashion
Week events and took in a Gianfranco Ferre show, where he sat up front with
Eartha Kitt, and then sat at the runway entrance for the Donatella Versace
show, during which he was near Courtney Love and was caught by paparazzi
staring at Kate Moss’s pink hair.]
By Jason Horowitz
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Taormina,
the Sicilian town hosting the G-7 summit meeting, has a reputation as a
sun-drenched
pleasure dome for reality TV stars, aging playboys and affluent
Russians.
Credit Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times
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Despite the town’s temporary transformation
into a police state in paradise for the Group of 7 summit meeting attended by
Mr. Trump and other world leaders, Taormina’s postcard panoramas, its exaggerated
Epcot Italian-ness and its reputation as the sun-drenched pleasure dome for
reality TV stars, aging playboys and affluent Russians remain intact.
It is a spot that is both exclusive and a
little hokey, where those with jet-setter schedules, gilded tastes and an
appreciation for luxury, models and discretion come together.
“That’s the room Trump will stay in,” said
Dino Papale, a 69-year-old Sicilian lawyer, promoter and all around bon vivant,
as he leaned around his courtyard’s wall and pointed at the adjacent Belmond
Grand Hotel Timeo.
Mr. Papale, who pulled a red “Make America
Great Again” cap over his wavy gray hair, said he met Mr. Trump several years
ago and was invited to his inauguration. “I’m the president of Trump’s Sicilian
fan club,” said Mr. Papale, who is also first among the many Taormina types for
whom the president is a kindred spirit.
Days after Mr. Trump’s election in November,
Mr. Papale was quoted at length in the local paper, La Sicilia, recounting that
Mr. Trump had visited Taormina at his invitation in June 2013 and secretly
stayed for three days at the Atlantis Bay Hotel.
In an interview in his rose-scented courtyard
filled with Greek, Roman and Bronze Age sculptures, Mr. Papale insisted that
“Trump was never here,” blaming the paper for inventing the story.
But at other points he was less definitive,
saying: “It could be that it happened, because everything can be true, right? I
don’t remember”; “If a friend says, ‘I’m coming to Taormina but no one can
know,’ what do you do?”; and, most mischievously, “Taormina is a very discreet
place” where “Americans and Russians often meet.”
The Trump administration did not return a
request for comment.
This week, at least, there is no mystery
about Mr. Trump’s arrival. And local residents with a taste for the finer
things in life eagerly awaited their international standard-bearer.
“I see myself as Trump,” said Vittorio
Sabato, known locally as “the Silvio Berlusconi of Taormina” as much for his
short stature, age-defying black hair and open-collar panache as for his
success as a businessman and politician.
He drove up the town’s winding roads
apologizing for his BMW (“I have a Maserati and a Porsche”) and pointed out
landmarks, including the hotel where he heard Mr. Trump had stayed.
But Mr. Sabato, the local king of building
materials, was more interested in discussing his own potential run for mayor
and his hope that Mr. Trump “will give me advice.”
While Mr. Trump, his family and advisers have
expressed especially warm feelings toward Italy — “Great people, love Italy,”
Mr. Trump said repeatedly in a recent meeting with the Italian prime minister
in the White House, according to a person in attendance — the president’s
actual experience in Italy seems limited.
In 1998, he and Paolo Zampolli, a business
associate and modeling agency impresario, went to Milan to scout potential
properties, Mr. Zampolli said in an interview this week.
During the trip, Mr. Trump stopped by Fashion
Week events and took in a Gianfranco Ferre show, where he sat up front with
Eartha Kitt, and then sat at the runway entrance for the Donatella Versace
show, during which he was near Courtney Love and was caught by paparazzi
staring at Kate Moss’s pink hair.
Mr. Trump’s wives, current and former, have
had a much stronger bond with the country.
When Melania Trump started modeling in her
native Slovenia, her father often drove her west to Milan, where Mr. Zampolli
discovered her in the mid-1990s and eventually introduced her to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s first wife, Ivana, “loves Italian
men,” said Rossano Rubicondi, who was her fourth husband. Twenty-three years
her junior, he parlayed their brief 2008 marriage into a spot on the Italian
version of the reality show “Celebrity Island.”
Mr. Rubicondi is still happy to trade in on
his tenuous Trump relationship. He is working on a new reality show about
opening a pizza place near the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. But
other Trump associates in Italy have apparently made the calculation that his
friendship is no longer good for business.
Flavio Briatore, the Italian entrepreneur
behind the Billionaire nightclub chain — he is also a convicted card cheat, a
businessman banned from Formula One races for life for race fixing and the
father of Heidi Klum’s child — is now perhaps best known for starring in the
Italian version of “The Apprentice.”
“There was only one person that I wanted, and
that was Flavio,” Mr. Trump said in a promo for the Italian show. In another
spot, the two men appear together at Trump Tower in Manhattan, firing each
other.
In May 2016 Mr. Briatore boasted to La
Stampa, a newspaper based in Turin, about his weekend with Mr. Trump at Fashion
Week in Paris in the 1990s. “I think I’m the first to bring him to Europe,” he
told the paper. La Repubblica, a daily newspaper in Rome, identified him as
“Trump’s best Italian friend.”
But now Mr. Briatore, through a spokeswoman,
said he had never seen Mr. Trump in Italy, that they just ran into each other
in Paris and that their relationship essentially amounted to a publicity stunt.
By contrast, Mr. Papale’s loyalty has not
wavered.
Mr. Papale walked to a table where he keeps
his most prized possessions. There was a medal awarded to him by the Russian
government. There, too, was a brochure for Trump Grande condominiums, a
favorite destination of wealthy Russians in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and,
because of his efforts, the twin city of Taormina.
He said he was introduced to Mr. Trump there
by his “dear friend” Elena Baronoff, a Soviet émigré who worked as Mr. Trump’s
exclusive sales agent, helping sell at least $100 million worth of apartments
to Russians.
Ms. Baronoff, who died in 2015, was a close
friend of many Russian power brokers, including the foreign minister, Sergey V.
Lavrov, according to Mr. Papale, recalling the time she told him that Mr.
Lavrov was arriving by yacht from Sardinia.
“She told me Lavrov is coming,” he said, “Can
you say hello?”
Despite the earlier press report here, he
insisted that it was not Mr. Trump who had visited Taormina in the past, but
rather Michael Dezer, the wildly wealthy developer of many of Mr. Trump’s
Florida properties.
In 2012, Mr. Papale bestowed on Mr. Dezer his
Wolfgang Goethe Taormina Media Award, which is usually reserved for writers who
write nice things about the town. “A great entrepreneur like Dezer, an
associate of Donald Trump, I wanted to give him this gift,” Mr. Papale
explained.
He added proudly that Mr. Dezer had stood on
a stage in front of his palazzo along with Ms. Baronoff and Russia’s general
consul, who, on another occasion, read a message of thanks to Mr. Papale from
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his work in advancing the country’s
image in Taormina.
Mr. Papale is a huge fan of Mr. Putin, and is
equally enthusiastic about Mr. Trump. As night fell, he ignored the stunning
views of his balcony, smoked Marlboro Lights and scrolled through pictures on
his iPad.
Here he was hanging out on Mr. Dezer’s plane
or with Ms. Baronoff in a Rolls-Royce. Here he was with the Sunny Isles Beach
gang on election night in Trump Tower, and here was a photo of Mr. Trump,
minutes after his victory, flashing a thumbs up.
“Here’s Donald,” he said.