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ROME: When Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as US president last year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was the only European leader invited to attend, promising the start of a golden age in relations between Washington and Rome.
A year-and-a-half later, their personal relations appear to be in tatters, leaving Meloni exposed on the foreign stage with her international strategy seriously compromised. Tensions between the two right-wingers surfaced at the start of the war against Iran, which damaged Europe’s economy and reawakened strong anti-war sentiment within Italy.
Video from this week’s G7 summit in France suggested that the two might have resolved their differences. But that hope was shattered on Friday, when the US president told an Italian TV channel that Meloni had “begged” him to take a photo with her.
Meloni shot back, saying Trump had fabricated the story. Going further, she accused him of showing far greater deference to the enemies of the West than he did towards old friends.
