Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and US President Donald Trump sought to ease tensions on the sidelines of the G7 summit of leading industrialized democracies in France, sources in Rome said on Tuesday.
According to reports from Rome, the two leaders held a “clarifying conversation” on Monday evening in the spa town of Évian, where the summit is being held, though no details of the discussions were disclosed.
Diplomatic sources said Meloni emphasized the “unity of the West,” which she described as “absolutely necessary in this time of major international crises” - a sentiment said to have been echoed by both sides.
Relations between Meloni and Trump have recently been strained. The US president publicly criticized the Italian leader after she described his verbal attacks on Pope Leo XIV as “unacceptable.”
When asked about Meloni at the time, Trump said: “I'm shocked by her. I thought she had courage. I was wrong.”
Meloni, a right-wing politician, had previously positioned herself as a bridge-builder between Europe and the United States.
She was the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration in Washington and has at times been dubbed the “Trump whisperer” due to her relatively close ties to the Republican.
