WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) -Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a shock journey to Florida to fulfill with Donald Trump late on Saturday, as the important thing European chief sought to buttress ties with the president-elect earlier than his inauguration on Jan. 20.
Members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort welcomed Meloni with applause after an introduction by the president-elect, based on movies shared on social media by reporters and others.
“That is very thrilling. I am right here with a unbelievable girl, the prime minister of Italy,” Trump instructed the Mar-a-Lago crowd, based on a media pool report. “She’s actually taken Europe by storm.”
Meloni is seen as a probably sturdy companion for Trump given her conservative credentials and the steadiness of the right-wing coalition she has led in Italy since late 2022.
She has additionally cast a detailed relationship with billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, a detailed Trump ally who spent greater than 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars} to assist him win the election.
Tommaso Foti, Italy’s EU and regional affairs minister, stated on Sunday that the assembly, which had not been introduced prematurely, confirmed that Italy might act as “a diplomatic bridge between two worlds: the European Union and the USA”.
Meloni’s journey comes days earlier than she is to fulfill U.S. President Joe Biden throughout a go to to Rome from Thursday to Jan. 12. Trump defeated Biden within the November election and is getting ready to return to the White Home.
Whereas no particulars of their assembly have been disclosed, Meloni had deliberate to speak with Trump about Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, commerce points, the Center East and the plight of an Italian journalist detained in Tehran, based on Italian media stories.
Trump and Meloni watched a screening of a documentary questioning the prison investigations and authorized scrutiny confronted by John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who was central to Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
One of many largest challenges dealing with Meloni is the arrest of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala in Iran on Dec. 19.
Sala was detained three days after Mohammad Abedini, an Iranian businessman, was arrested at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone components that Washington says had been utilized in a 2023 assault that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. Iran has denied involvement within the assault.
Meloni turned the most recent within the handful of international leaders who’ve visited Trump in Florida because the Nov. 5 election. He has met with Argentinian President Javier Milei, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
