Two Italian ministers came to the rescue on Monday of the head of government Giorgia Meloni, targeted two days before a NATO summit by a new attack from Donald Trump, after a heated exchange of arms last month.
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The American president published on his Truth Social platform on Sunday evening a manipulated image showing the Italian Prime Minister with stunned eyes in front of him, accompanied by a message in capital letters: “Protection order requested”.
Questioned on the Sky TG24 channel, the Deputy Prime Minister and head of Italian diplomacy, Antonio Tajani, considered that this message, repeated on the front page of all the major Italian dailies on Monday, “needs no comment”.
“We have said from the start that we would not respond to this type of comment, so we are moving on,” added the Minister of Foreign Affairs, saying he was “convinced that transatlantic relations go well beyond individual declarations”.
Giorgia Meloni, who refrained from commenting, had already been the target in June of the American president, who had claimed – without providing proof – that the Italian far-right leader had implored him to take a photo with him during a G7 summit a few days earlier.
He then said that Ms. Meloni, who until recently was one of his closest allies in Europe, “is doing poorly in Italy in terms of popularity.”
The head of the Italian government had described Donald Trump’s “attacks” as “insane”, and Antonio Tajani had canceled a visit to the United States, condemning “serious and offensive remarks”.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, who will accompany Ms. Meloni on Tuesday and Wednesday to the NATO summit in Ankara, judged on Monday that “the main thing is to preserve relations” transatlantic.
“It is about relations between States: individuals pass, but the links must continue. What matters is maintaining the unity of the Atlantic Alliance and the Western world,” he also declared on the Sky TG24 channel.
