Last month, on Italian TV, Donald Trump recounted an exchange with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the G7 conference. Trump's claim that Meloni 'begged me to take a picture with her' earned him a sharp rebuke. Many saw this as Meloni's attempt to bolster her popularity ahead of Italy's 2027 election. But Iohanne Holt argues that Trump’s insult struck directly at the international image Meloni has so painstakingly built
Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump enjoy shared views on immigration and ‘woke ideology’, among other political issues. Over recent years, this has made Meloni a useful bridge between Brussels and the White House. Their transatlantic relationship has even earned Meloni the nickname the ‘Trump whisperer’.
Indeed, in 2025, Meloni was the only European leader with a seat at the American President’s inauguration. Trump, in turn, praised Meloni for her strict immigration policies and personal ability.
Relations between Rome and Washington, however, soured earlier this year, after Italy refused the US military use of its NATO airbase in Sicily to strike Iran. The rupture deepened when the Pope Leo spoke out against the conflict. On Truth Social, Trump denounced the Pope as ‘WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy’.
Meloni condemned Trump's attack as ‘unacceptable’. Relations soured further when Trump claimed Meloni ‘begged’ him for a photo at the G7 summit. Meloni quickly rejected Trump's accusation, claiming the President’s statements were ‘fabricated’ and insisting that ‘Italy and I never beg’.
Commentators have suggested Meloni’s harsh rebuke was strategic: a move to bolster her popularity ahead of elections next year. I argue that her response was a defence of Italy’s newly constructed international role.
When Meloni took over as Italy's Prime Minister in 2022, many saw the Italian state as Europe's weak link. For years, Italy had been Europe's problem child, lectured by partners who bore none of the operational cost of mass migration across the Mediterranean frontier.
But Meloni managed to reframe Italy’s burden as a credential: Italians labouring at the coalface in stark contrast with the Brussels elites distanced from consequences. Those in Brussels who favoured open borders, Meloni argued, had the luxury of principle. Italy had the burden of reality. And while Brussels debated, Italy acted. Meloni struck bilateral deals with Tunisia and Albania to process and return migrants outside EU borders.
Since becoming Prime Minister, Meloni has reframed Italy's migration burden as a credential. Italians, in her narrative, labour at the coalface, unlike Brussels eurocrats in their ivory towers
In September 2023, something shifted. Most significantly, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen visited the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, Italy’s migration frontline. She framed her visit not as solidarity, but as following Italy’s lead. After the visit, Von der Leyen presented a ten-point action plan for EU migration policy, incorporating key elements of Italy's narrative. 'We decide who comes to the European Union', asserted Von der Leyen,' not the smugglers and traffickers’. She was speaking Meloni’s language. The student had become the teacher.
Crucially, this recognition extended well beyond Brussels. Donald Trump praised Meloni for ‘taking a tough stance on immigration’, adding he ‘wished more people were like her’. On a visit to Rome in 2024, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a centre-left humanitarian lawyer, praised Italy’s ‘remarkable progress’ on migration. Starmer also referenced Meloni's initiatives to outsource asylum processing to third countries. These were not Meloni’s natural allies, yet both came to her door.
Italy had fought hard to shed its image as Europe’s weak link. Trump labelling the country 'a beggar' was thus not just an insult but a threat to Italy’s international status.
Commentators have interpreted Meloni’s sharp rebuke as an attempt to manage domestic political pressures ahead of elections in a country where Trump is increasingly unpopular. Now that Italy has a hard-won new image, Trump's snub hits particularly hard.
This was not the first time Italy had been condescended to. In Meloni’s view, Italy bore a disproportionate migration burden, yet took the blame for not doing enough. Being dismissed as a beggar wasn't just insulting Meloni personally – it cast Italy back into the role of weak link, and reopened a historical wound she had spent years healing.
Trump’s insults may have been intended as personal slights against Meloni, but she reframed them as slights against her nation. The spat ceased to be about personal reputation and became a battle between preserving state dignity and suffering external humiliation.
The rise of sovereignist discourse on this side of the Atlantic reduces the cost of confrontation with the White House
Italy is no longer Europe’s problem child. Now, it can afford the reputational costs of escalation. It is also helped by the shifting context in Europe. The rise of sovereignist discourse on this side of the Atlantic reduces the cost of confrontation with the White House.
In sharply chastising Trump, Meloni has transformed a vulnerability into a strength. The confrontation performs, rather than disrupts, Italy's sovereignty.
Indeed, recent analysis suggests that Meloni’s confrontation with Trump signals a shift from Italy being a transatlantic broker to a leading voice in Europe’s emerging pushback against Washington.
In confronting Trump, Meloni positions herself at the vanguard of the European right as they turn away from Washington. After a decade of using Trump as proof their politics was gaining global traction, European right-wing leaders are increasingly prioritising national interest over loyalty to the US.
For European leaders, Trump is no longer a useful tool for mobilisation but a potential liability
In France, Jordan Bardella, head of Rassemblement National, described Trump’s behaviour as ‘erratic’. In Germany, leaders of far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) also began to quietly distance themselves from the US President.
For European leaders, Trump is no longer a useful tool for mobilisation but a potential liability. Meloni has been among the first to defy his scorn.
The result is that the dream of a stable transatlantic far-right alignment is no longer credible, but contested and increasingly costly. Meloni has shown that in European politics, narrative can be as powerful as material force. She is now turning that force against Washington.
