scrap with Italy\u2019s prime minister<\/a>, Giorgia Meloni \u2014 until very recently among the most Trump-aligned leaders in Europe. The president has been picking on her over her refusal to allow her country to be drawn into the war against Iran.<\/p>\nMr. Trump has been all over the front pages of the Italian papers for weeks. \u201cTRUMP \u00c8 UN COGLIONE,\u201d screamed the front page of the right-leaning newspaper Libero, using an Italian term of art that has many colorful translations \u2014 all of them vulgar.<\/p>\n
But the feud really crescendoed this weekend, when Mr. Trump posted a doctored picture of Ms. Meloni staring at him longingly with the caption, \u201cRESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has all contributed to a carnivalesque quality at this year\u2019s NATO.<\/p>\n
After Mr. Trump arrived, he sat beside Mr. Erdogan at a bilateral meeting in the Turkish presidential complex and promptly stirred up some fresh drama. He criticized Denmark and reminded NATO leaders that he still had designs on Greenland; complained that Britain, France and Italy did not do enough to support the United States in its war against Iran; said Europe was a lot better 20 years ago; and mused on Ms. Meloni, characterizing his quarrel that has caused so much international agita as something verging on playful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she\u2019s a nice person,\u201d he said breezily. \u201cI didn\u2019t put a heavy press on her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s conduct has been awkward for his supporters in Ankara, who say they\u2019re happy with the results he gets even if they can\u2019t always abide the way he goes about getting them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of ways of communicating back and forth,\u201d Mr. Rounds said when asked what he thought of the president\u2019s \u201crestraining order\u201d post about the Italian prime minister. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened. I don\u2019t know what was there, so I don\u2019t comment on everything he says, but I do look at his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Rounds credited the president\u2019s style for its results: NATO countries are coughing up more for defense spending.<\/p>\n
The Republican senator was standing in the middle of a tented party Tuesday evening thrown by the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank, at the Ankara Palas, a former state guesthouse converted into a presidential museum by Mr. Erdogan. It was a stuffy affair. Like so many of the parties thrown here this week, there was no alcohol, since it\u2019s prohibited from being served at government buildings under Mr. Erdogan\u2019s conservative Muslim administration.<\/p>\n
Arms salesmen, American Embassy staff, European diplomats and Turkish bureaucrats crowded around him to bat around the finer points of transatlanticism. As ever, Mr. Trump was the elephant in the tent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that the road to this summit has not been without its difficulty,\u201d Jenna Ben-Yehuda, an Atlantic Council executive, said in a speech to those in attendance. She talked about \u201chonest and tough conversations\u201d between allies.<\/p>\n
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, said she saw it as her mission in Turkey this week to remind European allies that no matter what drama the American president may be fomenting, Congress supports NATO. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that even as Mr. Trump threatens withdrawing from the alliance, he cannot do so without congressional approval.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn this, the 250th anniversary of the United States, there was a reason why the colonists wrote the Constitution the way they did because they didn\u2019t want a king,\u201d said Ms. Shaheen, who is retiring<\/a> after three terms in the Senate. \u201cThey wanted to have a government that was governed by the people. That\u2019s what we\u2019re here to remind people of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When President Trump stepped off his plane in Ankara on Tuesday afternoon, he received an over-the-top welcome comparable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[110175,128,1452,80357,103787,1480,103786,9,24,36267,63,80358,129,131,130,1069,1554],"class_list":["post-290482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-ankara-turkey","tag-bronx","tag-donald-j","tag-erdogan","tag-giorgia-1977","tag-international-relations","tag-meloni","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-nyc","tag-recep-tayyip","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-trump","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}