Italy's Meloni boosts ties with Trump in surprise Florida visit
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a surprise trip to Florida to meet with Donald Trump late on Saturday, as the key European leader sought to buttress ties with the president-elect before his inauguration on Jan. 20.
Members of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort welcomed Meloni with applause after an introduction by the president-elect, according to videos shared on social media by reporters and others.
"This is very exciting. I'm here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy," Trump told the Mar-a-Lago crowd, according to a media pool report. "She’s really taken Europe by storm."
Meloni is seen as a potentially strong partner for Trump given her conservative credentials and the stability of the right-wing coalition she has led in Italy since late 2022.
She has also forged a close relationship with billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, a close Trump ally who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help him win the election.
Tommaso Foti, Italy's EU and regional affairs minister, said on Sunday that the meeting, which had not been announced in advance, showed that Italy could act as "a diplomatic bridge between two worlds: the European Union and the USA".
Meloni's trip comes days before she is to meet U.S. President Joe Biden during a visit to Rome from Thursday to Jan. 12. Trump defeated Biden in the November election and is preparing to return to the White House.
While no details of their meeting have been disclosed, Meloni had planned to talk with Trump about Russia's war in Ukraine, trade issues, the Middle East and the plight of an Italian journalist detained in Tehran, according to Italian media reports.
Trump and Meloni watched a screening of a documentary questioning the criminal investigations and legal scrutiny faced by John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who was central to Trump's unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
One of the biggest challenges facing Meloni is the arrest of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala in Iran on Dec. 19.
Sala was detained three days after Mohammad Abedini, an Iranian businessman, was arrested at Milan's Malpensa airport on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone parts that Washington says were used in a 2023 attack that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. Iran has denied involvement in the attack.
Meloni became the latest in the handful of foreign leaders who have visited Trump in Florida since the Nov. 5 election. He has met with Argentinian President Javier Milei, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tells her party there's no room for fascism in its ranks
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told her Brothers of Italy party on Tuesday that it should expunge from its ranks anyone who idolizes Italy’s fascist past.
Her call came after an undercover media investigation last week released a video of members of her party’s youth wing making fascist salutes and chanting “Sieg Heil.”
In a letter to party leaders, Meloni said she was “angry and saddened” that their actions damaged the group’s reputation.
“There is no room in Brothers of Italy for racism or antisemitism, nor is there space for those who are nostalgic for the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century or for any manifestation of foolish folklore,” she wrote.
“Our task is too great for those who have not understood its scope to be allowed to ruin it.”
Brothers of Italy traces its roots to a neo-fascist group set up after World War II, but Meloni herself has looked to distance herself from the far right in recent years and says her party is mainstream conservative.
Opposition parties leapt on the investigation by the online newspaper Fanpage. They said it showed Brothers of Italy was a refuge for extreme right-wingers, belying Meloni’s efforts to present a moderate image both at home and abroad.
Meloni, who last week denounced the newspaper’s undercover methods, said on Tuesday that Brothers of Italy had to be transparent and consistent.
“Anyone who believes there can be a public image of Brothers of Italy that does not correspond to their private behavior simply does not understand what we are, and thus is not welcome among us,” she said.
Fanpage published clips of youth members chanting “Duce,” a reference to Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. It also showed a group chat where someone had posted the message: “Jewish people are a race and I despise them.”
Two youth members resigned last week after the second instalment of the expose was released.
Trump hails Italy’s PM as a ‘fantastic woman’ as she visits him in Florida
US President-elect Donald Trump hailed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a “fantastic woman” as she became the latest world leader to visit his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
“This is very exciting,” he told a crowd at the residence. “I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy. She’s really taken Europe by storm.”
Meloni, a member of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, took office in October 2022 and is known to have ties to the incoming Trump administration, in particular with his ally Elon Musk.
While European powerhouses France and Germany are going through a period of rocky politics, the stability of her coalition in Italy and conservative credentials make her a natural ally for the incoming US leader.
Trump and Meloni were joined by the former’s nominees for secretary of state and national security advisor – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida).
No details have been given about what was discussed, although the Italian leader, like others, has been seeking to strengthen ties with the President-elect ahead of his inauguration on January 20. CNN has approached Meloni’s office and the Trump transition team for comment.
A possible topic on the agenda is the detention of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was arrested in Iran last month.
Italy’s foreign ministry confirmed in a statement last Friday that Sala, a reporter for Italian daily Il Foglio, was detained in Tehran. Iranian state news agency IRNA said Monday that Sala had been detained on December 19 after “violating the laws of the Islamic republic of Iran.”
Sala’s detention has caused a diplomatic headache for Italy, with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying his government was working “tirelessly” to bring her home.
In a sign of the burgeoning relationship between Italy’s leader and Trump’s camp, Andrea Stroppa, a cybersecurity expert and ally of Elon Musk based in Rome, posted on X a fake, AI image of Meloni standing alongside Trump and Musk. All three are dressed in clothes reminiscent of the Roman Empire.
Meloni will also meet with President Joe Biden during the latter’s trip to Rome this week. Biden will thank her for her “strong leadership of the G7 over the past year, and discuss important challenges facing the world,” a White House press statement last month said.
Her visit to Florida comes after she dined with Trump and Musk during the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last month, an experience Trump later told the New York Post was positive.
Trump and Meloni, while politically similar, don’t necessarily align on all the world’s most pressing conflicts. Meloni has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers, having met with President Volodymyr Zelensky a dozen times since Russia’s invasion.
Meanwhile Musk and Meloni forged their strong friendship in the summer of 2023, and the Tesla founder headlined Meloni’s Brothers of Italy political convention, Atreju, in December last year.
Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei was the first world leader to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his re-election. Other visitors have included Hungary’s Victor Orban and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
CNN’s DJ Judd contributed to this report.
