There’s more to the bickering and constantly changing relationship between Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump than meets the eye. In fact, the quarrels are just a facade to hide the fact that the two leaders are much more similar in their views than they at first appear.
First, let’s not forget that Meloni and Trump are both right wing populists. Meloni, despite her recent shift towards a more pro-European stance, remains a hardcore demagogue, prone to shouting in parliament just as in the old days she used to bellow her extremist message in public piazzas.
But nowadays, she must appear as though she bends the knee to the Brussels bureaucrats and their anti-Trump rhetoric – but that’s only because, as prime minister of a country that is a founding member of the EU, she has no choice.
Italy is part of the EU, and as a UN and Nato ally must embrace multilateralism. It will always be so. Meloni has to tread in the footsteps of her predecessors – at least as far as foreign policy goes.
So if she attacks or fights back against Trump or the US administration more broadly on thorny geopolitical issues, it’s mostly because being openly anti-Trump nowadays is Europe’s default setting. If she were to publicly display any kind of sympathy for Trump, Meloni would be diverging from a continent-wide consensus.
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And yet, even though she attacks him on the outside, behind the facade she is enacting many key domestic policies that are pure Trumpism.
This is most evident when it comes to immigration. Meloni recently blocked incoming migrants from the destabilised Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This was to stop what she called “illegal immigrants” from entering the country. What she had done in effect was to freeze Italy’s full participation in the Schengen treaty.
It is maybe not as shocking as Trump’s decision to put a stop on visas for people from 75 countries, or the excesses of his ICE paramilitary force. But just like Trump, Meloni is a nationalist who strongly supports strict border enforcement and has often called for new European policies that concentrate on national sovereignty and self-determination.
Deep down, Meloni is a follower of the primacy of the nation-state, to a degree that conflicts with the central ideals of the EU. In that regard, she is also aligned with Trump’s instincts. She has also been pushing the EU for more leeway on national budget policies and investments ever since her rise to power.
As for traditional social values, Trump and Meloni share almost identical views.
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The role of family as the building block of society is a cornerstone of their welfare policies. When she’s on prime ministerial business, Meloni takes her nine-year-old daughter Ginevra with her around the world on diplomatic missions (dragging along also well-paid babysitters). It mimics, albeit on a much smaller scale, Trump’s frequent parade of his sons and daughters at political events.
The two leaders’ tone and attitude are also very similar – they’re both extremely loud when they speak in public, and show an incredible amount of pompous self-confidence.
Meloni may have taken it down just a notch since she started wearing high heels and elegant flared trousers, but she is still quite aggressive in speech.
Her rhetoric, just like Trump’s, focuses on key populist mottoes and phrases to convince voters that she’s ready to fight the battle of ordinary citizens against the elites. But the irony is that Trump and Meloni are now at the heart of that elite.
Trump and Meloni are against progressive trends and what they see as conformist, liberal ideas. Both of them oppose LGBT rights, same-sex couples, and anything to do with gender ideology is blasphemy to them.
Meloni and Trump might argue from time to time, but they talk the same, think the same and govern the same to such an extent that you can’t help thinking, when it comes down to it, they are the same.
