Trump wrote: \u201cNow, after the United States defeated Iran militarily, she wants to be friends again in order to get her \u2018numbers up\u2019. No thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Meloni was doing \u201cpoorly in Italy\u201d and suggested this was linked to her refusal to let the US use Italian \u201clanding strips or runways\u201d during the conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump also revived his long-running complaint that the US spent heavily to protect \u201cso-called\u201d Nato allies, saying Washington contributed hundreds of billions of dollars to defend Italy and others.<\/p>\n
Meloni, in a blistering response on Instagram, accused Trump of \u201cconstant, unprovoked … senseless\u201d attacks and said her popularity did not depend on her relationship with the US President.<\/p>\n
Referring to her popularity, she said: \u201cBeing your friend certainly has not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you\u201d.<\/p>\n
She rejected Trump\u2019s criticism over the use of US military facilities in Italy, saying they were governed by agreements that Rome had respected.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIn any case, my popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.\u201d<\/p>\n
The remarks were a sharp escalation of a dispute that had already triggered anger in Rome and came at a moment when Trump has already unsettled European partners with his handling of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani cancelled a planned visit to the US, saying that Trump\u2019s \u201cgrave and offensive\u201d words towards Meloni \u201coffend the whole of Italy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meloni, who leads Italy\u2019s far-right Brothers Of Italy Party, had said earlier she was \u201cfrankly stunned\u201d by Trump\u2019s original comments and accused him of showing more deference to the West\u2019s adversaries than to his allies.<\/p>\n
The backlash was notable because Meloni, unlike many European leaders, had invested heavily in personal diplomacy with Trump and had been viewed in Rome and Washington as one of his most natural partners on the continent.<\/p>\n
She had spent months cultivating close ties with the US President while trying to reassure European allies wary of his second term.<\/p>\n
Meloni had said at the end of the G7 summit in Evian that the atmosphere had been \u201cvery positive\u201d and that there was \u201cno friction\u201d between Trump and other leaders.<\/p>\n
She acknowledged, however, that she and Trump both had \u201cquite strong characters\u201d, and the pair were seen together several times at the summit – including during a meeting on a sofa after which Trump appeared to pat her shoulder.<\/p>\n
In her latest comments, Meloni sought to draw a line under the spat, saying that Saturday\u2019s response would be her last remarks on the subject.<\/p>\n
Relations between the two had already deteriorated during the Middle East war.<\/p>\n
Trump turned on Meloni in April after she defended Pope Leo XIV from his criticism of the Pontiff\u2019s anti-war views, accusing the Italian leader of failing to help the US through Nato.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump wrote: \u201cNow, after the United States defeated Iran militarily, she wants to be friends again in order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23545,74,806,1975,5660,1863,5782,93307,30801,80050,2178,209722,56266,92297,42,16718,4508,2198,244516,6722,43,29767,2572,415,30619,29689,2687,40249,118938,9939,165,40,38,41,39,2179,19096,9938,119119,102],"class_list":["post-487541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accusing","tag-after","tag-as","tag-at","tag-attacks","tag-back","tag-comments","tag-constant","tag-denounced","tag-diplomatic","tag-donald","tag-escalated","tag-escalates","tag-giorgia","tag-headlines","tag-him","tag-hits","tag-italian","tag-meloni","tag-minister","tag-news","tag-photograph","tag-president","tag-prime","tag-repeatedly","tag-row","tag-saying","tag-seeking","tag-senseless","tag-states","tag-their","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-trumps","tag-united","tag-unprovoked","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}