Trump said he is “shocked” by Meloni, exposing a rift between Washington and Rome over the war on Iran.
US president Donald Trump lashed out at Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday in a harshly-worded interview with leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The exclusive interview saw Trump express open astonishment at Meloni’s conduct, accusing her of refusing to support American efforts on Iran’s nuclear programme and of failing to act in Italy’s own interests.
“I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” he told the paper, adding that he was “shocked” by her.
Trump delivered his stinging rebuke of Meloni, his erstwhile European ally, in a six-minute telephone interview with the same newspaper in which he had praised the Italian leader effusively just weeks earlier.
As recently as March, Trump had described Meloni as “an excellent leader and a friend” in another call with the Corriere, saying she “always tries to help.” That assessment has now been pointedly withdrawn.
Iran war
At the centre of the dispute is Italy’s position on Iran. Trump accused Meloni of refusing to engage on the issue and of expecting the US to act on her behalf.
“She simply says Italy doesn’t want to be involved,” he said: “She thinks America should do the work for her.”
When asked whether the two leaders had spoken about the matter, Trump said they had not – and had not been in contact for “a long time”.
“Because she doesn’t want to help us with NATO, doesn’t want to help us get rid of the nuclear weapon,” he said. “She is very different from what I thought.”
When questioned if he asked Italy to use minesweepers for the Strait of Hormuz, the US president stated: “I’ve asked them to send whatever they want, but they don’t want to because NATO is a paper tiger.”
Pope Leo
The rupture was further deepened by Meloni’s public rebuke of Trump’s scathing criticism of Pope Leo XIV, whom Trump had insulted as “terrible” and accused of failing to understand the Iranian nuclear threat.
“He doesn’t understand, and he shouldn’t be talking about war, because he has no idea what’s going on” – Trump told the Corriere – “He doesn’t understand that 42,000 protesters were killed in Iran last month.”
Confronted with the fact that Meloni had called his remarks about the pope “unacceptable,” Trump turned the phrase back on her.
“She is the one who is unacceptable,” he said, arguing that Meloni “doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if it had the chance.”
Trump also questioned whether ordinary Italians were content with their prime minister “doing nothing” on oil.
“Italy is not going to be the same country,” he warned, before returning to his familiar refrain that immigration was “killing Italy and all of Europe.”
The interview also touched on the recent electoral defeat of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, a figure Trump described warmly. “He did a good job on immigration,” Trump said. “He didn’t let people come and ruin his country the way Italy did.”
Rift with Rome
The exchange marks a remarkable reversal in what had been one of Trump’s closest relationships with a European leader.
Meloni was the only European leader invited to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, and had positioned herself as a bridge between Washington and European capitals.
That role now appears to have collapsed under the weight of disagreements over Iran, NATO, and Pope Leo.
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