ANKARA: US President Donald Trump appeared to have turned the page on a diplomatic row with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Tuesday as he landed in Ankara for a key Nato summit.
The pair fell out late last month after Trump claimed in remarks to an Italian TV channel that Meloni had “begged” him for a photo together at the G7 summit and he only agreed because he “felt sorry for her”.
Meloni angrily denied the claim, calling it “made up”, prompting Trump to double down, with his remarks opening an unusually personal rift with one of Europe’s most prominent right-wing leaders.
The spat prompted an undiplomatic back-and-forth which dragged on until Sunday when he published a doctored image on his Truth Social platform showing Meloni looking at him as if adoringly in a post accompanied by the words: “Restraining Order Needed”.
But on Tuesday, he appeared to be taking a more conciliatory tone.
“I think she’s a nice person, actually,” he said at a joint press conference with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We had a bad relationship, folks. It became a little bad because she refused to help us… She refused to get involved with the Hormuz Strait,” he said, reiterating his disappointment over Europe’s reluctance to play a role in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
“I like her, I think she’s a nice person actually, but I think she made a mistake.. she just wasn’t there for us and I wasn’t happy about that,” he said.
Trump has been highly critical of European NATO countries ahead of the Ankara meeting, with allies seeking to showcase growing defence spending in the hope of placating him.
