Trump turns against Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, broadening clash with Europe
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.ROME—As President Trump’s rift with Europe widens, he is casting even his political friends into the chasm.Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has spent the past year trying to act as a bridge while Trump tussled with other European leaders over tariffs, Ukraine and Greenland.Trump, who previously called Meloni a “great leader,” now says he is shocked by her refusal to send forces to help open the Strait of Hormuz amid the U.S.-Iran war. “I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Tuesday.The abrupt breakdown of their political friendship shows how the middle ground is disappearing between a White House that is demanding loyalty from its allies and a Europe where voters and governments increasingly view the U.S.
leader as a destabilizing force.Meloni’s effort to hold the West together is laudable, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti told The Wall Street Journal. “But this fails to take reality into account,” he said.
Trump’s open hostility to the European Union makes it “difficult to act as a bridge.”Ever-fewer European leaders now openly back Trump. On Sunday, he lost one of his closest allies, Hungary’s longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who suffered a crushing election defeat despite U.S.
efforts to support him.Some European leaders, such as Spain’s left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, have repudiated Trump’s foreign policy.But in many cases Trump has reacted with anger or ridicule toward European leaders who have tried to win his ear, such as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.Now Meloni—a fellow right-winger whose views on immigration, gender and “woke ideology” are close to
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