On the third statement in 24 hours about the White House-Vatican clash, in a breathtaking crescendo from the very timid to the thunderous, from the indecipherable and almost inaudible first communiqué on Monday morning (in which she merely wished the Pope a good trip) to the increasingly explicit words on Monday evening and then again yesterday morning, Giorgia Meloni finally managed to get attacked by Donald Trump, who expressed great disappointment in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
We will see if the reckless maneuver by our Prime Minister will achieve any effect and especially if the desperate attempt to find her “Sigonella moment” will not end like the previous attempt, made to avoid mistakes precisely on Sigonella, first leaking the news of a sensational refusal opposed to the Americans on the use of the base and then spending entire days explaining that there was nothing new or different from the pure and simple application of the agreements.
Making the turnaround even more evident, perhaps even a bit too much, is the fact that just yesterday Meloni also announced the decision to suspend the defense agreement with Israel, as the opposition had long demanded and she had never even dreamed of considering, thus giving the impression that even Benjamin Netanyahu, openly backed or silently covered while flattening Gaza and inciting settlers in the West Bank, has fallen victim to the victory of the No vote in the referendum on the separation of careers between prosecutors and judges (I don’t envy the diplomatic advisor who will have to explain it to him), as if he were Daniela Santanchè. In short, more than a “Sigonella moment,” that of our Prime Minister and the entire government resembles more a Savoia phase, almost a September 8th, in which yesterday’s allies suddenly became today’s enemies, the troops are left stranded, and nothing makes sense anymore.
Making the frantic attempts to distance themselves from the Trump administration even clumsier is the competition from Matteo Salvini, who until a few months ago was competing with Meloni over who invited Elon Musk and the entire American administration first to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and now over who distances themselves first. Heartbreaking, in this regard, are the behind-the-scenes stories about the League leaders to whom Salvini would have explained the need to break away from the American president, who begged him to do it at least gradually, so as not to fall into the grotesque. There’s nothing to do, the race to abandon the Trumpism ship is becoming comical.
