Meloni and Trump's Political Fallout

Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was once one of Donald

Trump's most committed European allies.

But Meloni has learned the hard way that defending Italy's national

interest doesn't sit well with Donald Trump's

aggressive America First worldview, and that a close

relationship with the unpopular US president can hurt

politically at home. After Trump's return to the White House,

Meloni walked a delicate tightrope, trying to avoid any

antagonizing criticism of the US president, even as he hit

Europe with tariffs, attacked Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy,

and threatened to invade Greenland.

Trump, in return, praised Meloni as a fantastic woman

doing great things for Italy. But Meloni finally fell out of the

president's good books after her government refused to allow the US

military to use bases in Italy for Trump's controversial

bombing of Iran. In a dramatic about-face, Trump

began insulting Meloni, claiming that she wasn't as strong or

courageous as he had originally thought.

Meloni finally hit back hard with a social media post in which she

angrily questioned why Trump was so much tougher with the

US's traditional allies than with real enemies

of the West. With that, Meloni had effectively

extricated herself from a personal relationship that had become

increasingly a political liability for her, given Trump's

unpopularity in Italy. But the breakdown of their

relationship is a cautionary tale about the

limits of European ideological affinity with the MAGA

movement.