Trump Flips On Former Key European Ally: ‘It’s Her Who’s Unacceptable’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

President Donald Trump flipped on his once close ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, on Tuesday in a phone interview with an Italian daily newspaper. Trump responded to Meloni’s recent criticism of his attack on Pope Leo XIV by accusing Meloni of being a changed person.

On Monday, Meloni called Trump’s multiple attacks on the Pope “unacceptable.”

“I find President Trump’s words toward the Holy Father unacceptable,” Meloni said in a statement. “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal that he calls for peace and condemns every form of war.”

Meloni was responding to Trump’s broadside against the Pope, calling “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” The Pope has been a fierce critic of the war in Iran has used recent public appearances to call for peace.

“And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” Trump also said of the Pope.

Following Meloni’s defense of the Pope, Trump turned his ire on her. Trump called his former ally “unacceptable,” repeating her words, and fumed that she is “no longer the same person.”

Trump made the comments to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, adding he was “shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.”

“It’s her who’s unacceptable, because she doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if it had the chance,” Trump added, repeating some of his attack on the Pope as well.

Meloni, a right-leaning populist in her own right, had begun distancing herself from Trump in recent weeks amid political setbacks domestically, which were linked in part to Trump’s rock-bottom approval in Italy.

“When we don’t agree, we must say it. And this time, we do not agree,” Meloni said earlier in the month, when pressed on the Iran war. Meloni had previously positioned herself as a link between Trump and the rest of the EU, especially when it came to combating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and promoting a harder-line immigration policy.

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