IN OCTOBER 2023, Giorgia Meloni was facing a domestic crisis. A hot mic had captured her longtime partner—the father of her child and a news anchor—making sexist jokes off air. In the viral video and audio, he was heard asking his female co-workers whether they minded if he touched his “package.” One of the female co-workers shot back that he was already touching himself. Then, he propositioned one of them to join “a threesome, even a foursome.”
The audio had all the trappings of a tabloid scandal: It was embarrassing, vulgar, and politically problematic. So Meloni did what Italians have come to expect of their fiery prime minister: She publicly dumped him.
“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted nearly 10 years, ends here,” she wrote in a social-media post the morning after the recordings leaked. She thanked him “for giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Ginevra.” While Giambruno publicly apologized, stating his life “disintegrated overnight,” Meloni’s message was clear: Next.
The incident was classic Meloni: immediate, brutal and emblematic of her reputation as a leader who doesn’t tolerate affronts to her dignity—and knows exactly when to push back; a political acumen that was on display last week when she traded barbs with Donald Trump. After he accused her of begging him for a picture, she had one message for the American president: “Neither I nor Italy ever beg.”
Bombastic politics is increasingly a norm, and Meloni is one of its most astute practitioners. It propelled her career in a country where chauvinistic attitudes are deeply rooted. It helped her become one of Trump’s most important European allies—someone who seemed spiritually aligned in political style and who stood by the American president even after he imposed tariffs and threatened to take Greenland, even though she didn’t agree. It has also helped her retain her populist base, even as she shed her far-right image among mainstream conservatives at home and abroad.
Most of all, this mix of pugnacity and pragmatism has enabled the 49-year-old Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, to achieve a rarity for Italy: a stable government.
Much of Europe is in the throes of political turmoil. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has cycled through four prime ministers in less than two years. Germany’s government has seen its poll ratings collapse and a far-right party is now the country’s most popular. Just this week, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced he was stepping down, leading to the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade.
Then there is Italy, where the most immediate national controversy is its failure to qualify for the World Cup. Meloni’s government is on track to outlast all previous ones since the fall of the fascist regime in 1945.
“She can be very kind and warm,” said Carlo Fidanza, a politician with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party who has known her for decades. “But when it comes to standing up for her beliefs, and defending her dignity or that of her country, she doesn’t hold back. She is reasonable, but she can also be tough if you cross her.”
ALTHOUGH MELONI’S Brothers of Italy party espouses traditional family values, the prime minister never fit neatly into a conservative mold. She and her sister Arianna, another high-ranking party member, were raised in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in Rome by a single mother who penned romance novels. Their father, whom Meloni described as a Communist sympathizer, left the family to settle in Spain.
As a teenager, Meloni entered far-right politics as a youth activist in the Italian Social Movement, founded by former members of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party after World War II. By 2006, she joined parliament and was appointed the youngest deputy speaker in Italian history, and two years after that, the youngest minister. She founded her Brothers of Italy party in 2012.
In a political landscape dominated by men, she was the rare woman—of which she was sometimes reminded. When she decided to run in Rome’s mayoral election in 2016 while pregnant, her right-wing peers sneered—not that it stopped her.
“If this is how they treat me, and I am a privileged person,” Meloni said at the time, “just imagine how they treat a call-center worker on a temporary contract who wants to have a baby. No one should be able to tell women what they can or can’t do because of their pregnancy.”
In 2022, she fired up her populist base to run for prime minister, railing against illegal immigration, same-sex parenting and the left’s cultural dominance in a strong Roman accent that is a reminder of her humble upbringing.
At the same time, she offered safer and more moderate pro-NATO, pro-American and fiscally prudent positions, explicitly rejecting her far-right past.
Weeks before the elections, Meloni released videos in multiple languages saying the Italian right “unambiguously” condemns the fascist regime’s suppression of democracy and antisemitic policies.
As prime minister she moderated her aggressive anti-European Union populism in favor of closer cooperation with other member states on issues such as combating illegal immigration.
After she won in a landslide, she ditched her sneakers and her more colorful outfits in favor of a more polished look of tailored neutral or pastel pantsuits—many of them from a little-known fashion label near Milan called D. Exterior or, if the occasion called for it, Armani. Her light brown hair became increasingly blonde. Her left-wing critics complained that her softer, feminine appearance whitewashed her harsh right-wing rhetoric—even as her face hid nothing: the eye rolls, the pinched mouth—making no secret of her mood or of her contempt for other politicians.
Two years ago, Meloni traveled to Naples for the inauguration of a new sports complex in a formerly crime-ridden area. Government ministers, local dignitaries and journalists were there to greet her. Among them was Vincenzo De Luca, a center-left governor who was previously caught on camera describing Meloni as a stronza—the Italian equivalent of bitch. The prime minister quietly took note.
Arriving in a crisp white shirt that day, she walked straight to him to introduce herself: “President De Luca, I am that bitch Meloni,” she said, shaking his hand. “How are you?”
By the time Trump’s second term arrived, Meloni was well-poised to be his go-to European ally. She shared an ideological affinity with the MAGA movement, and was close to Elon Musk, who helped bring them together. Trump invited her to his 2025 inauguration, the only European head of government to attend, and called her a “great leader.”
But the war in Iran proved too much even for Meloni.
The attack in February came as a surprise to European leaders. Italy, which depends heavily on gas imports, was especially exposed to the energy crunch it caused, prompting Meloni to fly to the Gulf and to Algeria to try to firm up supplies.
European refusal to participate in the war, frustrated Trump, who swiftly renewed his threats to withdraw the U.S from NATO.
At first Meloni avoided directly criticizing Trump—even though by the spring of 2026, 83% of Italians said they had no confidence in his ability to do the right thing on world affairs, according to a Pew Research Center poll.
It was the pope that finally broke them. After Pope Leo XIV criticized the war effort, Trump lashed out. It’s one thing for an American leader to attack the pope; but in Catholic Italy, home of the Vatican, that behavior crosses an even brighter red line. Under pressure from public opinion, Meloni had little choice. She called Trump’s insults “unacceptable.”
“She is the one who is unacceptable,” Trump retorted.
Last week’s Group of 7 Summit in France was a chance to clear the air. On the surface, Trump’s meeting with world leaders went smoothly. There were no angry outbursts. There were smiles. Allies praised the deal Trump secured to stop the war in Iran.
But beneath the surface, there were big, unresolved questions: Would the Iran ceasefire last? What does the U.S. plan to do about NATO? A hot mic caught Macron telling the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he earlier had a “difficult” discussion with Trump.
Meloni got alone time with Trump, engaging in what appeared to be a friendly conversation on a beige sofa.
When European Council President António Costa saw Trump and Meloni together, he told them: “You are friends again.” Meloni corrected him: “We have always been friends.” The Italian right-wing tabloid Libero published a front-page cartoon of Trump serenading Meloni with the headline “It’s love again.”
Trump quickly proved them wrong. The following evening, Trump picked up a phone call from an Italian television reporter. The reporter asked him about Ukraine, but what Trump pivoted to was Meloni.
“How is your president doing, how is she doing?” asked the president. He asserted that Meloni had “begged” him for a picture at the G-7 summit. “I wouldn’t have done it but I felt sorry for her.”
After reading the exchange on Friday morning, Meloni didn’t hold back.
“Some things require an instant response. The statements by Donald Trump are completely made up,” she said in a 33-second social video, visibly irate.
“I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves like this with his own allies,” she continued, ruefully. “It’s a shame that he doesn’t have the same determination toward the enemies of the West.”
The next day, Libero, the tabloid, published a new headline: “Trump è un coglione”—the Italian equivalent of a jackass, but literally a testicle.
The fighting escalated over the weekend, but for now the conflict works in Meloni’s favor.
“As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped,” she added. “I suggest you focus on yours.”
The statement was a sign of how much the Italian-American relationship had fallen since the inauguration.
“At first, Trump was viewed as someone you wanted on your side,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, a political analyst and founder of the polling firm YouTrend. “Italy’s electorate now considers him toxic—he is like political kryptonite.”
Kryptonite is something Meloni can’t afford. Brothers of Italy remains the country’s most popular party heading into parliamentary elections, likely next year. But her coalition recently lost a key referendum on a constitutional reform and a new far-right party led by a former army general is threatening to fracture her majority.
Meloni’s coalition has survived this long partly because it hasn’t rocked the boat, analysts say. It has managed Italy’s fragile finances reasonably well, but hasn’t pushed through the kind of ambitious reforms Italy desperately needs to boost its chronically low growth. She’s also thrown red meat to her culturally conservative base, making it a crime for Italians to pursue surrogacy abroad (it is already illegal domestically), creating yet another obstacle for gay couples who want to start a family.
“There is a saying in Italy: Those who last the longest are those who don’t cause discontent,” said Pregliasco, the pollster. “More than achieving substantial results, the political priority is to not create too much trouble.”
That includes not taking a breakup with America too far. She has instructed her government ministers to attend the July 4 celebrations in the U.S. Embassy in Rome, according to members of her party.
“These relationships don’t begin or end because of who happens to be in power at a particular moment,” Meloni said in a televised interview on Tuesday.
“We sometimes talk about foreign policy as if it were ‘Temptation Island,’” she said, referencing a reality dating show. “Foreign policy is more complex than that.”
Write to Margherita Stancati at margherita.stancati@wsj.com