Giorgia Meloni visits Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

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Georgia Maloney dined with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf club on Saturday as the Italian prime minister seeks to strengthen ties with the US president-elect ahead of his inauguration.

It Italian The leader’s unannounced trip comes days before outgoing US President Joe Biden is due to visit Rome and the Vatican in what will be his last foreign trip before leaving office.

“This is very exciting. I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the audience at Mar-a-Lago. “She’s really taken Europe by storm, and everybody else, and we’re just having dinner tonight.”

Melons has not made any public comments, nor has his office made any statement regarding his trip.

He was an ardent admirer of Trump during his first term, when he was still a staunch opposition figure, and recently struck up a close friendship with Trump adviser Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.

Also in attendance at Mar-a-Lago was Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, who called Maloney “a great ally, a strong leader.”

Members of Meloni’s right-wing “Brothers of Italy” party hope the ideological affinity between the two leaders will help him become one of Trump’s key European interlocutors.

Maloney is one of several foreign leaders who have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump since his re-election and ahead of his inauguration on January 20. Trump’s right-wing allies Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Javier Millais of Argentina have both visited Trudeau also made an emergency visit after Trump threatened to slap Canada with 25 percent import duties.

Maloney’s trip comes as he faces his most difficult diplomatic challenge since taking office amid a domestic political outcry over the arrest in Iran. Italian journalist Cecilia Sala.

Salah, who was in Iran on a valid journalist’s visa, was detained days after Italy arrested an Iranian engineer and businessman wanted in the United States for allegedly exporting drone technology used to kill three American soldiers in Jordan a year ago. for

An Italian journalist told her family in a rare call home that she was being held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, sleeping on the floor with the lights on at all hours.

Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, said Sala was arrested “for violating the laws of the Islamic Republic,” without giving further details.

However, Iran’s embassy in Rome has openly linked Salah’s detention to Italy’s December 16 arrest of engineer Mohammad Abedini, whose expedited release Tehran has demanded.

Abedini, now in a Milan prison, is wanted by the US to stand trial on various criminal charges for allegedly “illegally exporting sophisticated electronic components” from the US to Iran, according to the US Department of Justice.

Tehran has warned Rome about harming bilateral relations if its citizen is extradited to the USA. Abedini is scheduled to appear in an Italian court on January 15, where his lawyer will demand that he be released from prison and placed under house arrest.

The US Department of Justice has warned Rome against such a move, citing past precedents in which suspects sought by the US for criminal trials have succeeded. escape from Italian house arrest.

The Sala case is not the only issue that could test Rome’s relationship with Washington when Trump returns to the White House later this month.

Businessmen fear that Italy’s economy will be hit hard if Trump follows through on his promise to impose heavy tariffs on all imports. Rome is also far from meeting its NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, a major focus for Trump, who wants Europe to pay more for its own security.

Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome