'Serious and Offensive Words' Spark Heated Clash Between Trump and Italy's Meloni in Wake of G7
Just as President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were cooling off their feud, it flared up again due to comments Trump made about Meloni.
Italy’s action in barring the use of a base in connection with the Iran war had riled Trump, as had Meloni’s defense of Pope Leo XIV after he criticized the war, as noted by EuroNews.
“We have always been friends,” Meloni said after European Council President António Costa noted the two talking during the G7 summit.
“I was abandoned,” Trump said, only to have Meloni interject with a smile, “No, you were not.”
The veneer of cordial relations peeled back after an Italian TV channel quoted Trump as making comments that inflamed Italian sensibilities.
“She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her,” Trump was quoted as having said, according to Reuters.
“She begged me to take a picture with her. She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said.
Those were fighting words, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani declared, noting that because of them, he would not come to the U.S. as planned next week.
“The grave and offensive words of President Trump… offend the whole of Italy,” he said.
Meloni was livid, as noted by Reuters.
“Donald Trump’s statements are completely made up. I am frankly astonished. I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies: it is not the first time, moreover,” she said.
Io e l’Italia non imploriamo mai. pic.twitter.com/sTpKlqWB67
— Giorgia Meloni (@GiorgiaMeloni) June 19, 2026
“I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence,” she continued.
“There is one thing he should remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg,” she said.
An Italian government official laid it on even thicker.
“It is unclear whether out of intent or ineptitude [Trump] is wrecking the historic relations between the United States and Europe,” Giovanbattista Fazzolari, undersecretary to the prime minister’s office, said in a statement.
“With his inappropriate outbursts, he has managed no easy feat, to make the United States unpopular across the entire European continent, damaging not only Europe but above all the United States,” he said.
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