Trump's Attacks on Meloni Rally European Leaders
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- Trump questioned Italy's reliability as a wartime ally and accused Meloni of groveling for his attention, prompting European leaders to publicly rally around her and thawing frosty ties over her hard-right roots.
- Meloni joined a late June Berlin meeting with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Poland and met French President Emmanuel Macron the next day in southern France — the first bilateral Italy-France summit since the pandemic.
- Meloni refused to let U.S. bombers headed to the Middle East use a Sicilian base in March without parliamentary approval, a move that helped shift how European peers viewed her post-fascist party.
- European far-right parties are recalibrating against Trump: France's Jordan Bardella called him "erratic" and "extremely unsteady," while Germany's AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla said he was "extremely disappointed."
- Viktor Orbán, long regarded as Trump's closest EU ally, was voted out of office in April despite support from Trump and prominent MAGA figures — a warning sign about the domestic cost of alignment.
- A Pew Research Center survey found 83% of Italians have no confidence in Trump's ability to do the right thing in foreign affairs, putting pressure on Meloni ahead of a national election due by 2027.
Why it matters: European coordination has been elusive for years, but Trump's pressure is forcing leaders — including nationalist ones — to act as a bloc on tariffs, defense, and the wars in Ukraine and Iran. Orbán's ouster and the tonal shift from figures like Bardella show that close alignment with Trump now carries a measurable domestic political cost across the continent.
