Giorgia Meloni met Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday and stated her ambition to ‘make the West great again’. The Italian prime minister is closer to the Trump administration than any other Western European leader, and later today in Rome she will host J.D. Vance.
The American vice-president could be described as Meloni’s ideological soulmate, and it was noteworthy that when Meloni spoke of her ambition to reinvigorate the West she added: “When I speak about (the) West mainly, I don’t speak about geographical space. I speak about the civilisation, and I want to make that civilisation stronger.”
This will be music to the ears of Vance
This will be music to the ears of Vance. He also in engaged in a battle to save western civilisation, as he explained in a speech earlier this month. “We are not going to reclaim our civilisation,” he said, “…unless we have the courage to speak the truth, unless we have the courage to live the truth.”
He aired some of these truths to the European elite in Munich in February, and they weren’t well received. The standard response was to ask who is this upstart American lecturing us about free speech and democracy? One prominent German politician was even reduced to tears.
Meloni experienced a similar reaction to a speech she made in 2019. It was the speech that made her name, and made her the bête noire of Europe’s progressive elite – until Vance came along and stole her crown. “I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian, and you can’t take that away from me,” she told her cheering supporters.
Since then she is often referred to by the liberal press as ‘far-right’ or worse. In reporting Meloni’s meeting with Trump, the Guardian today mentions in the second paragraph that her “Brothers of Italy party has roots in neo-fascism”.
The same newspaper chose to brush over her party’s history last week when Meloni hosted King Charles and Camilla on a State visit to Italy; it may have been awkward explaining why the King of England was meeting a ‘fascist’.
Meloni wasn’t shy in promoting the Royal visit on her X account. She published a 70 second highlights package set to music accompanied by her declaration that the trip “allowed us to underline the historic friendship between our Nations, which we hope will be strengthened more and more.”
It’s been a good month for Meloni. First she meets the King, then Trump and today Vance. One can only imagine how this had gone down in Paris with a certain Frenchman.
For years, Emmanuel Macron has strutted the international stage as Europe’s de facto leader. But no more. He is still trying desperately to remain relevant. Perhaps it was a coincidence that on the same day Meloni met Trump in the White House, Macron organised at short notice a meeting in Paris at which Secretary of State Marco Rubio and America’s special envoy Steve Witkoff were present. Ukraine was top of the agenda but, as Le Monde reports this morning, ‘no real progress’ was made.
Did Meloni make any progress with Trump about a trade deal with Europe? The pair oozed optimism in front of reporters. Meloni said she was “sure” a tariff agreement could be hammered out, as did the president. “There will be a trade deal, 100 per cent,” Trump said, “but it will be a fair deal”.
Other issues discussed in private were space, energy and defence spending. Meloni promised the president that Italy – one of Europe’s biggest offenders when it comes to welching on Nato defence commitments – will meet the 2 per cent of GDP target, though even that figure might not be enough for Trump.
Overall, however, Meloni enjoyed her day in Washington. Vance sat quietly on the sofa without sticking his oar in, as he did in February when Keir Starmer was in the Oval office. On that occasion, Vance accused the Prime Minister of stifling free speech.
Britain isn’t the only Western European nation to come in for criticism from the Trump administration. France, Germany and Spain have also been targeted in some shape or form. Essentially, the antagonism is ideological. Starmer, Macron, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz are Progressives. Meloni is not. As she told Trump, they must sustain “the fight against the woke…that would like to erase our history.”
Meloni is likely to have more to say on this subject when she welcomes Vance to Rome later today. It will be the vice-president’s first trip to Europe since he caused such a commotion in Munich in February.
Also present will be Meloni’s deputy, Matteo Salvini, another man known to give Progressives nightmares. According to the BBC the meeting “could offer a further glimpse of the ideological alliances that Vance hopes to nurture in Europe”.
It would seem that Washington no longer sees Brussels, London or Paris as the beating heart of Europe. It’s now Rome.