Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Saturday evening with U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump for informal talks at his golf club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. The visit comes just days before Meloni’s long-awaited meeting with outgoing President Joe Biden, scheduled to take place in Rome Jan. 9-12.
The leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) arrived around 7:30 p.m. local time at Trump’s lavish residence, with him defining her “a fantastic woman (who) has really taken Europe by storm, and everyone else”. The dinner set up in the mansion’s ballroom was also attended by a number of prominent figures in the future Trump administration, including Marco Rubio (who apostrophized Meloni as “a great ally and a strong leader”), listed as the next secretary of state, and Scott Bessent, candidate for Treasury.
Afterwards, the guests attended a screening of a movie titled “The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice,” which focused on alleged Democratic fraud in the 2020 election (which Trump lost to Biden) and the work of lawyer John Eastman, who argues that there is a double standard justice system in the U.S. that arbitrarily harms conservative circles.
The Italian premier and the president-elect have expressed mutual esteem before, and Saturday’s visit is one of the first meetings of a foreign leader with Trump since his election victory–which seems to reinforce the idea that the premier could become Trump’s key ally in Europe and mediate tensions between him and Brussels.
The official agenda for the meeting has not been released, but among the topics that might have been addressed, according to observers, were Trump’s threats to start a trade war with Europe, the possibility of reducing U.S. support for NATO, and the U.S. position on the conflict in Ukraine,
Also on the table may have been the case of Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist arrested in Iran just days after Italy carried out, at the request of the United States, the arrest of an Iranian citizen accused of supplying drone components to the Revolutionary Guardians.
Sources close to the meeting stated that Meloni reportedly pushed hard for the talks with Trump, which were considered crucial to strengthening her international standing. The Italian premier also enjoys a privileged relationship with Elon Musk, whom the premier recently called “a genius painted as a monster” in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Since his election, Trump has already received at Mar-a-Lago the Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán, known for his model of “illiberal democracy,” and the Argentine president Javier Milei, a leading exponent of the radical right. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also recently visited the president-elect, who has threatened to impose new tariffs against his northern neighbor.
