Giorgia
Meloni meets Donald Trump in flying visit to Mar-a-Lago
US
president-elect praises Italian prime minister at Florida resort for ‘really
taking Europe by storm’
Angela
Giuffrida in Rome
Sun 5 Jan
2025 13.02 GMT
Italy’s
prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, made a flying visit to Donald Trump’s Florida
golf club on Saturday, during which the US president-elect praised the
far-right leader for “really taking Europe by storm”.
The pair
were photographed in the grand ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The
five-hour visit comes a few days before Meloni is due to welcome Joe Biden to
Rome in what is expected to be the last foreign trip of his presidency.
“This is
very exciting,” Trump told a group gathered at Mar-a-Lago, according to a media
pool report. “I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy.
She’s really taken Europe by storm.”
Potential
members of the future Trump administration were present, including Marco Rubio,
the nominee for secretary of state, who welcomed Meloni to Florida and
described her as a “great ally, strong leader”, according to the Wall Street
Journal reporter Alex Leary.
The group
then watched the premiere of The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice, a
documentary on the efforts of Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman to keep him in
power after the 2020 US presidential elections.
No official
agenda was announced, but the New York Times reported that Meloni pressed hard
on the case of Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist detained in solitary
confinement in Iran. Sala’s arrest in December on charges of breaching Islamic
law was allegedly a reprisal for the arrest, at the request of the US, of a
Swiss-Iranian businessman and alleged arms trafficker with ties to the Iranian
regime at Milan’s Malpensa airport. Italy is aggressively pressing for the
immediate release of Sala from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Other topics
reportedly included the war in Ukraine, gas supplies and possible new US
tariffs on EU goods.
It is the
second time Meloni has met Trump since he won the US elections in November.
Trump called the Italian leader “a real live-wire” when they met in Paris in
early December for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Before
taking power in October 2022, Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy
party, was an explicit supporter of Trump, praising his brand of politics as a
model for Italy and regularly travelling to his political gatherings. But she
has also been savvy in building good relations with Biden and bolstering
Italy’s Atlanticist credentials.
Observers
have said that common views on issues ranging from immigration to abortion,
alongside Meloni’s strong relationship with Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk,
could result in her becoming the US president-elect’s main interlocutor in
Europe.
Biden is due
to arrive in Rome on Thursday for a four-day visit that will include a meeting
with Meloni and Pope Francis.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário