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.
