Still Trump’s Favorite European? How Meloni Survived Her White House Tightrope

-Analysis-

WASHINGTON – Being in the same room as Donald Trump requires the patience of a Tibetan monk.

Giorgia Meloni, seated to his right in the Oval Office, found herself a mere spectator to the American president’s towering one-man show. Fidgeting with a green pen, clicking the cap open and shut, the Italian Prime Minister waited for an opening to speak, or for Trump to pause long enough to hand her the floor. But Trump’s verbal deluge spills over from one answer to the next, until finally someone asks if a question can be directed at the prime minister.

Actually, make that two.

Meloni had already extended an invitation for Trump to visit Rome. He gave a tentative yes. She came away with little concrete on trade tensions with Europe or on her dream of hosting an EU-U.S. summit in the Italian capital.

Still, it’s not just the trade war that makes getting close to Trump a tricky endeavor. Beyond the effusive praise he lavishes on Meloni, things get stickier in the Oval Office once questions start flowing her way.

Chief among them: does she think it’s fair that Trump pinned the blame for the war in Ukraine on Volodymyr Zelensky?

You know how I see it

And then there’s the matter of military spending. During the extended bilateral talks, did they discuss raising defense budgets beyond the NATO-mandated two percent of GDP? Meloni stood firm in her support for Kyiv, careful to strike the right tone with her host. She remembers how February went, when Zelensky sat in the same chair she now occupied, and got hit with the full force of Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s fury.

“You know how I see it,” she says. “There was an invasion, and the invader is Putin and Russia. But what matters now is that we want to work together for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

She gets to witness, firsthand, Trump’s uncanny knack for flipping reality on its head. He flatly denies saying what he said, putting on a show that stretches well past the half-hour mark. He insists he never blamed Zelensky for the war — “He didn’t do the best job, I’m not a big fan” — and claims he never called the Europeans “parasites.” Even though he has been in office for three months and hasn’t delivered on his promise to end the war in 48 hours, Trump says he’s optimistic about a ceasefire deal — and he even acknowledges Italy’s role in supporting Ukraine.

It’s never enough

Meloni says that during their meeting, she and Trump discussed these joint efforts. She laid out her proposal for security guarantees modeled on NATO’s Article 5, to serve as a protective shield for Kyiv. But the conversation didn’t get far on one of the topics she was most prepared for: Italy’s difficulties in ramping up defense spending. Trump’s impatience with allies who fail to meet their commitments is well known.

In public, though, he puts on a friendlier face with Meloni. At their first press appearance in the Cabinet Room, she declared that “Italy will meet its commitments and reach 2 percent of GDP before the NATO summit.” That leads directly to a question Trump has made a nightmare for Italy’s budget: is two percent really enough, given that he talks about five percent and a possible compromise might land at three and a half? Trump’s answer is a cold splash of reality, lightened only by a chuckle that Vance shares: “It’s never enough.”

An informal mission

In the Oval Office, Meloni tries to sidestep the awkwardness of balancing alliance commitments with budget constraints. “We’re a serious nation,” she says, “but we didn’t talk about specific targets or how much the percentage should increase.”

Trump, Meloni, and their teams spent more than two hours together. Much of what is said comes out clearly during the two media moments, one of which is entirely unscripted.

We need to meet each other halfway

Before she flew to Washington, Meloni took on an informal mission from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: she wants a meeting with Trump to try to move trade talks forward at the leadership level. But Trump continues to keep her at arm’s length and stays vague even with Meloni on the idea of a Europe-U.S. summit in Rome.

The prime minister, who planned to update von der Leyen right after the visit, stresses that she’s not in Washington to negotiate tariffs — that’s Brussels’ job. Still, the two leaders did broach the subject of mutual tariffs. Trump isn’t lifting them just yet, but Italian sources say there were signs of possible movement during the talks. “I believe we need to speak honestly and meet each other halfway,” Meloni says.

The West doesn’t mean much

This was Meloni’s first real appearance as a leader in Trump’s orbit. He barely let her talk, but showered her with praise. She can feel the raw energy of a man who is still the symbolic figurehead of nationalists around the world. She tries to appeal to him with slogans that sound more like his than hers. “Let’s make the West great,” Meloni says, riffing off his iconic phrase, Make America Great Again.

But the West, in the grand geopolitical sense, doesn’t mean much to Trump. He’s all about business. That’s where he’s most at ease. He wants to sell more arms and more liquefied natural gas to Europe.

Meloni confirms that Italy will boost energy imports and that investment will expand into other areas, including space. Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite constellation — originally expected to make an appearance at the White House — is not spotted. “We didn’t talk about Starlink,” Meloni says, “but we will work together in space, on certain projects, like the Mars mission.”