President Donald Trump is walking back his comments about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a once-close ally. Trump is now calling her “a nice person” while still criticizing her for refusing to help him with his war on Iran.
The recent comments from Trump at the NATO summit in Turkey follow a bizarre social media post. The president took to his Truth Social platform Sunday and posted a doctored photo of Meloni. In the picture, she appears to be gazing adoringly up at Trump, who is looking back at the camera.
News reports indicate the photo was manipulated from a different picture of the Italian PM at a previous summit where she was laughing and joking with world leaders.
Trump’s post was captioned, “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.” The president appeared to be escalating the feud with her, which started after a recent Group of 7 summit when Trump crowed that she “begged him” to take a photo with her.
She flat-out denied that the interaction had happened and essentially accused him of lying about it. The incident prompted Italian officials to cancel a planned meeting at the White House last month.
Fast-forward to Tuesday in Ankara, when a reporter asked Trump what he meant by the “RESTRAINING ORDER” post.
The American president tried to downplay his weird antics toward someone who had once been a good friend and fumbled for an explanation.
“Can you clarify what you meant by your social media post with respect to Prime Minister Meloni, the restraining order?” a reporter asked during a joint press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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“I don’t know. I think she’s a nice person, actually,” Trump began.
“We had a bad relationship; it became a little bad because she refused to help us. I didn’t put a heavy press on her, but she refused to get involved with the Hormuz Strait, or you could also say just Iran,” he grumbled.
“She refused to get involved. So, it soured my relationship with her a little bit, but I like her. I think she’s a nice person, actually, but I think she made a mistake,” he stated, never one to apologize for anything.
“But I like her. I think she’s a nice person, but I think she made a mistake,” he repeated.
“She just wasn’t there for us, and I wasn’t happy about that. You could imagine. I wasn’t happy about that,” he added.
Social media had no tolerance or empathy for Trump’s bizarre behavior toward an important European ally.
“Yep, he avoids the question completely, takes no responsibility. ‘I wasn’t happy about that,’” a Threads user observed.
Others piled on. “What a freak! Someone needs to ‘restrain’ him.”
Threads user Easy O put it this way. “So he resorted to childish idiocy because he didn’t like that she didn’t back his criminality? It figures.”
This user is just plain fed up: “Trump. SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE! You are such an embarrassment to the United States.”
Trump’s self-made feud with Meloni erupted after Italy denied a U.S. request to use an airbase in Sicily to launch strikes on Iran in March. Reuters reported that the Italians denied the request because the Trump administration had not sought prior approval from their government.
