For years, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy enjoyed leverage as the right-wing leader who could bridge the gap between Europe and President Trump.
This week, though, she seems to have decided that Mr. Trump is a bridge too far.
After suffering major political setbacks because of her association with Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Italy and seen as the cause of rising gas prices, Ms. Meloni seized on an opportunity to extricate herself from a relationship that had grown domestically and internationally poisonous. After Mr. Trump launched a broadside on Monday against Pope Leo XIV, Ms. Meloni rallied to the American pontiff’s defense, saying, “I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable.”
Mr. Trump, clearly jilted, lashed out at Ms. Meloni, saying in an interview with an Italian newspaper on Tuesday that he hadn’t talked to her “in a long time,” was vexed by her lack of participation in the war in Iran and was “shocked by her,” adding, “I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” He responded to her “unacceptable” criticism by snapping, “She’s the one who’s unacceptable.” On Wednesday, he added in a television interview that with Italy, “we do not have the same relationship.”
The spat seemed to be the end of, or at least a low point for, perhaps Mr. Trump’s most special relationship in Europe.
It is also another remarkable moment in the career of Ms. Meloni, who has over decades shifted from teenage neofascist activist to hard-right party leader — before finally emerging as a pragmatic conservative and the first female prime minister of Italy.
When Mr. Trump returned to power last year, many in the European establishment feared that he would pull her to the far-right extremes. Instead, analysts suggest, Mr. Trump may have actually pushed her deeper into the Europe mainstream.
“In the relationship with Trump, she originally thought he could be an asset, and maybe he was, because she could appear as the person that could mediate between the rest of Europe and Trump,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Florence. “But gradually it has become a liability. I think she took advantage of what he said about the pope to make a firm statement and take distance. She couldn’t do otherwise.”
At first, Ms. Meloni’s connection to Mr. Trump had the makings of a beautiful friendship.
In 2018, when she was still a marginal figure looking for oxygen in Italy’s crowded populist space, Ms. Meloni invited Mr. Trump’s former top adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, to be the guest of honor at her political conference, named after a hero in “The NeverEnding Story.” The next year, she proudly called herself “the only Italian” invited to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. She spoke on the same day as Mr. Trump, and from her seat in the audience gushed about his remarks on social media even as he delivered them.
In 2022, she said in an interview with The New York Times: “Trump did some very good things when he was president. For example, in foreign policy, we had no problems. There were no wars.”
Years later, when they were both at the height of their power, they seemed to be hitting it off.
“You don’t mind being called beautiful, right?” Mr. Trump said to Ms. Meloni at a summit in Egypt last October. “You are.”
Despite the public displays of affection, throughout his second term, Mr. Trump has increasingly put pressure on Ms. Meloni, along with other European allies, to increase Italy’s military spending and to accept unfavorable trade terms.
She showed signs of resistance. Last April, as Mr. Trump threatened to raise tariffs, she said, “I think the choice of the United States is a wrong choice,” even as she cautioned against retaliatory tariffs from Europe.
Then things started getting tense. In January, as Mr. Trump increasingly began to float the idea of taking Greenland, she said, “I don’t believe in the idea of the U.S. launching military action on Greenland, which I would not agree with.” Days later, when Mr. Trump walked back his threats, she spoke as someone who understood him, saying she was “not surprised, to be honest.”
But when Mr. Trump decided to attack Iran, he did not give Ms. Meloni a heads-up. To her humiliation, her defense minister was vacationing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the time and had to be evacuated via military jet.
The war also led to a spike in gas and electricity prices in Italy. Ms. Meloni, a populist with a sharp sense of pocketbook issues, understood the political danger, especially as Italians prepared to vote in a referendum on a crucial judicial change that she supported.
As poll after poll showed that Italy did not support the war and did not like Mr. Trump, Ms. Meloni started speaking out.
“I am concerned, obviously, because it would be stupid to believe that what happens even far from our borders does not involve us,” she said on March 2, adding, “The United States and Israel decided to attack without the involvement of their European partners.”
Days later, she made it clear that “we are not at war and we do not want to go to war.” She dispatched Guido Crosetto, the defense minister who had been marooned in Dubai, to be even more forceful, saying the attack by the United States and Israel “certainly happened outside the rules of international law.” She then added in a speech to Parliament that because the United States had problems communicating, she couldn’t necessarily endorse the American assessment that Iranian intransigence had thwarted negotiations over a deal.
Ms. Meloni has also sought daylight with Israel, previously a key ally. This week, she announced that Italy would not automatically renew its defense agreement with Israel “in view of the current situation.”
For all her effort to distance herself from Mr. Trump’s war, she badly lost the referendum on the judiciary anyway, after the vote became perceived as a plebiscite on her own popularity. In an effort to settle scores with those she believed had done her wrong, she fired a minister and aides whom she held responsible for the defeat.
But analysts said that a rupture with Mr. Trump was the breakup that would matter most to Italian voters. And Mr. Trump’s attack on the pope gave her an opening.
Now, experts say, Ms. Meloni will have to decide if she wants to go it alone, or seek closer alliances in the European establishment that she rose to power bashing.
After an important European ally, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, lost power on Sunday, Ms. Meloni is in need of new friends, particularly as she prepares for elections in Italy expected next year.
“She’ll have to get closer to Europe,” Mr. D’Alimonte said. “Now she’s isolated.”
For Mr. Trump’s part, he complained that she wasn’t the leader he thought he knew. “She’s much different,” he said, “than I thought.”
Josephine de La Bruyère contributed reporting from Rome.
Jason Horowitz is the Madrid bureau chief for The Times, covering Spain, Portugal and the way people live throughout Europe.
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