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Giorgia Meloni dined with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf club on Saturday as the Italian prime minister looks to strengthen ties with the US president-elect ahead of his inauguration.
The Italian leader’s unannounced trip comes days before outgoing US President Joe Biden visits Rome and the Vatican for what will be his last overseas trip before stepping down.
“This is very exciting — I’m here with a fantastic woman — the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the audience at Mar-a-Lago. “She’s really taken Europe by storm, and everybody else, and we’re just having dinner tonight.”
Meloni did not make any public comments, nor did her office make any statement about her trip.
She was an ardent admirer of Trump during his first term – when he was still a fringe opposition figure – and has recently struck up a close friendship with Trump adviser Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
Also present at Mar-a-Lago was Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, who called Meloni a “great ally, a strong leader.”
Members of Meloni’s right-wing party, the Brothers of Italy, have hoped the two leaders’ ideological affinity will help him emerge as one of Trump’s key European interlocutors. The president-elect has expressed enthusiasm for the Italian leader, whom he met last month in Paris during the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
Meloni is one of several foreign leaders who have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump after his re-election and before his Jan. 20 inauguration. Trump’s right-wing allies Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Argentina’s Javier Milei have both made visits. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also made an emergency visit after Trump threatened to hit Canada with 25 percent import tariffs.
Meloni’s trip came as she faced her toughest diplomatic challenge since taking office amid domestic political protests over the arrest in Iran of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala.
Sala, who was in Iran on a valid journalist’s visa, was arrested just days after Italy arrested an Iranian engineer and businessman wanted in the US for exporting drone technology used to kill three US soldiers in Jordan a year ago. seen.
The Italian journalist told her family in a rare phone call home that she was being held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, sleeping on the floor with a light on around the clock.
Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, reported that Sala was arrested for “violating the laws of the Islamic Republic”, without providing further details.
However, the Iranian embassy in Rome has expressly linked Sala’s detention to Italy’s arrest on December 16 of Mohammad Abedini, an engineer whose expedited release has been sought by Tehran.
Abedini, who is now being held in a Milan prison, is wanted by the US to stand trial on various criminal charges for allegedly “illegal export of sophisticated electronic components” from the US to Iran, according to the US Department of Justice.
Tehran has warned Rome of damaging bilateral ties if its citizen is extradited to the US. Abedini will appear in court in Italy on January 15, where his lawyer will seek his release from prison and house arrest.
The US Department of Justice has warned Rome against such a step, citing past precedents in which suspects wanted by the US for criminal trial have managed to escape Italian house arrest.
The Sala case is not the only issue likely to test Rome’s relationship with Washington once Trump returns to the White House later this month.
Businesses fear that Italy’s economy will suffer a severe blow if Trump follows through on his promise to impose heavy tariffs on all imports. Rome is also far short of its NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense — a major focus for Trump, who wants Europe to pay more of its own security spending.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome
