President Donald Trump’s relationship with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is heading into the NATO summit under strain, after Trump publicly faulted the Italian leader for refusing to back U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
For a president who measures alliances through the prism of loyalty, Italy’s refusal to get further involved did not go unnoticed.
Answering questions from reporters during his bilateral meeting with Turkish President Erdogan, Trump described Meloni as a “nice person,” but made clear that personal warmth has not erased his irritation.
“She just wasn’t there for us, and I wasn’t happy about that,” Trump said, referring to Italy’s decision not to become more involved in the U.S.-led effort. “You can imagine, I wasn’t happy about that.”
The comments set up an awkward encounter between Trump and Meloni who now find themselves divided over a central security question: how far European allies should go in backing Washington in the Gulf.
The summit is expected to mark the first time Trump sees Meloni since he claimed last month that she had “begged” him for a photo at the Group of Seven summit in Italy.
“She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon (But so did NATO, for that matter!),” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Meloni forcefully rejected the claim.
“I and Italy never beg,” she said at the time, turning what might otherwise have been dismissed as Trumpian banter into a matter of national pride.
Trump has since kept the rift alive. Days ago, he posted a picture of himself with Meloni with the caption “restraining order needed,” a reference to his earlier claim about the photo request.
The Trump-Meloni relationship, once viewed as one of the president’s closest alliances in Europe, has cooled in recent months after the economic fallout from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and Meloni’s refusal to let U.S. aircraft bound for the Middle East use Italy’s air base in Sicily.
