Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni accused President Donald Trump of fabricating a story that she begged him for a photograph at the recent Group of Seven summit, escalating a feud that has strained the transatlantic relationship. In a social media video, Meloni said Trump’s claim was “made up” and “totally invented,” fusing personal and national pride in a single retort: “I do not beg, nor does Italy.”
Trump first made the allegation in an interview with an Italian television journalist, according to the Guardian. He then doubled down in a post on his Truth Social platform, asserting that Meloni wanted the photo to boost her “flagging” approval ratings — a decline he attributed to her refusal to back the U.S.-led war in Iran. The Spanish newspaper El País reported that Trump’s feathers had been ruffled by a video from the G7 meeting showing Meloni appearing to scold him.
In a subsequent Instagram post, Meloni insisted that her supposed drop in popularity had nothing to do with the U.S., though she added in a sharp aside that “being friends with Trump was not helping.” Her foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, canceled plans to travel to Miami for a U.S.-Italian business forum, calling the episode “serious and offensive.”
Writing in the Guardian, Riccardo Alcaro, head of research at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, said that while Trump’s attack was predictable, Meloni’s forceful response was not. Alcaro said the root of the rift is less about geopolitics than about “strategic electioneering at home” for Meloni, who faces elections due by 2027.
Trump is not wrong about Meloni’s popularity problems, Alcaro wrote. In a March referendum, voters decisively rejected a judicial reform package she championed. The center-left Democratic Party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement are forging an alliance, and a new far-right formation, National Future led by former general Roberto Vannacci, has drawn support away from Meloni’s three-party governing coalition. According to polls cited by Alcaro, the coalition is projected to lose the next election.
Alcaro said that publicly clashing with Trump — who is deeply unpopular in Italy — carries electoral advantages for Meloni. On her left, it deprives the opposition of a major line of attack over her earlier closeness to Trump. On her right, it forces National Future onto terrain Meloni now seeks to dominate: a nationalist conservative narrative that also rejects subservience to the U.S.
Meloni also hopes the rift strengthens her position within the European right, Alcaro wrote. Distancing from Trump helps her draw a line between herself and pro-Trump figures like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and align instead with the French National Rally, whose presidential candidate Jordan Bardella could become Europe’s leading nationalist figure if he wins next year’s election.
Alcaro noted that Meloni is pushing for changes to Italy’s electoral law that would award bonus seats to the winning coalition, require new parties to collect 500,000 signatures to qualify for parliament, and force coalitions to name their candidate for prime minister before the vote. Opponents have described the reform as a semi-authoritarian power grab, but Alcaro wrote that its approval “will mark the unofficial start of the election campaign.”
Despite the rupture, Alcaro wrote that the Italian government is still working with the Trump administration to prevent further damage. Tajani has confirmed his attendance at a July 4 celebration at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Rome, and the ambassador has offered conciliatory words.