Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Italians have feasted on the salacious details of the Prime Minister's alleged dalliances for weeks. But hearing what D'Addario and L'Espresso says is the voice of the 72-year-old Prime Minister may make it harder for the public to believe his version of events. A male voice, which sounds like Berlusconi, speaks intimately with the woman, telling her to wait in the "big bed" - apparently a reference to a gift from Vladimir Putin - while he goes to take a shower. When the same man calls D'Addario the next morning, she reports that she's losing...
...After her night with the Prime Minister, D'Addario rings Tarantini to tell him that the envelope of money she had been expecting wasn't there. Not that the 42-year-old woman sounds angry. She remarks that the Prime Minister had promised to help her resolve a local building-permit problem and that he wanted to see her again. "He said he has a girlfriend who he wants to have lick me," D'Addario tells Tarantini over the phone on Nov. 5, according to the L'Espresso tapes. When the Bari businessman laughs, D'Addario swears that those were...
...Berlusconi is letting his lawyers do the talking. Niccolo Ghedini, who is the Prime Minister's longtime attorney and an Italian Member of Parliament, told the Ansa news agency that it was illegal to post the recordings, which in any case were "totally unlikely and a product of the imagination." Still, the Prime Minister must figure out how to definitively change the story line, even as most in Italy assume that more revelations are likely to emerge. Here are five ways Berlusconi can escape his bedroom...
...Attack: Berlusconi has blamed L'Espresso and its sister newspaper La Repubblica of having a personal vendetta against him and has publicly told advertisers to deny business to the publications. Presenting himself as a victim of the press is an old tactic with an ironic twist, since the Prime Minister personally owns huge swaths of the Italian media. Still, it's becoming increasingly harder for Berlusconi to convince supporters that his opponents are simply making this all up. (Read "Berlusconi Under Attack - from His Wife...
...Revel in it: "Italians like me as I am," Berlusconi stated a month ago. That's true. The Prime Minister has an incredible ability to embody certain values that Italians see in themselves. They also like that he defies what many see as the hypocritical moralizing of his opponents. Remember, Berlusconi is at his most powerful when he is at his most entertaining...