THE NEW YORK TIMES: For generations, Italian craftspeople have built scenes depicting Jesus’ birth, sometimes including figures of celebrities. This year, some are adding statuettes of President Trump.
President Trump has likened himself to a king, a dictator for a day and an emperor.
Now, during Christmas in Naples, he can be remade as one of the three wise men.
On Via San Gregorio Armeno, a street in the center of this ancient port city in southern Italy, shops have for generations sold meticulously crafted carvings of Nativity scenes — sometimes adorned with miniature statues of contemporary celebrities. For years, figures of Diego Maradona, the Argentine soccer star who played for the city’s leading team, have been perennial top sellers, as have statuettes of Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon and four-time Italian prime minister.
This Christmas, models of Mr. Trump are the new front-runners.
Mr. Trump “is very loved,” said Michele Buonincontro, who founded a studio and shop 32 years ago to make and sell the traditional Neapolitan Nativity scenes known as presepi. Three rows of Trump figures, wearing dark suits with red ties and crowned with bright yellow helmets of hair, stood on a table in a workshop at the back of Mr. Buonincontro’s shop.
Some of Mr. Buonincontro’s clients insert figurines of Mr. Trump into Nativity scenes as one of the three wise kings who brought gifts for the newborn Jesus, he said. “I am not saying he is a saint, but he is connected to religion, to religiosity,” Mr. Buonincontro added.
At Naples Cathedral, where an elaborate Nativity scene is set inside a chapel near the front of the church, the Rev. Federico Battaglia, secretary to the archbishop of Naples, said he saw no reason Mr. Trump wouldn’t fit in.
Jesus was born “under the Empire of Augustus,” said Father Battaglia, referring to the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. If Jesus were born today, he added, it might be “under the Empire of Trump.”
“Augustus was the most powerful man of his time," he said, “as Trump is of ours.” » | Motoko Rich | Reporting from Naples, Italy | Tuesday, December 23, 2025
