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Few have noticed yet but Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Donald Trump’s key point of contact in Europe — above all thanks to her close friendship with Elon Musk.
The relationship between Trump and Meloni, via Musk, could become very special indeed. In particular, it may prove crucial for what happens in Ukraine.
They may not be in love with each other but Musk and Meloni are in love with each other’s ideas
The tech tycoon backed Trump’s election campaign with an estimated $127 million, plus his vital vocal support on X. He’s now become a top consigliere to the president-elect and has been appointed as the head of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut government waste. This is something he has become notorious for in his own businesses. At X, for example, he sacked half the staff after buying the site in 2022. It is said that at SpaceX they can do things for $50,000 that NASA can only do for $500,000.
During his victory speech in Mar-a-Lago, Trump delivered a eulogy to the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X, saying among much else “I love you Elon Musk” and “We have a new star, a star is born, Elon.”
Less well known than Musk’s support for Trump is his huge admiration of Italy’s first female prime minister. She is without doubt his favorite European leader and he has twice been her guest in Rome.
No sooner had Meloni put the phone down on Trump to congratulate him on his election victory — her team said she was the first European leader to speak to him — than she was on the blower to Musk.
The Italian prime minister and the American president-elect, according to her official comuniqué, “had expressed a desire to work together in close coordination on all the main international issues, beginning with Ukraine.”
Of her subsequent phone call with Musk she said on social media: “In the past few hours I’ve spoken to my friend Elon Musk. I’m convinced that his dedication and vision can become an important resource for the United States and for Italy.” To curious journalists she said he had “added value” and had done “extraordinary things.”
What “extraordinary things” will Musk do for Trump? It looks like it is not just government waste that he will be dealing with. When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called to congratulate Trump on his election victory last Wednesday, Musk was still with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago and joined the call.
Musk has been intimately involved in Ukraine since 2022, when he provided the country with his Starlink internet system for free — something widely regarded as vital to its ability to resist the Russians. However, he later complained about the cost which led to Joe Biden’s White House picking up the tab. And increasingly he has questioned the point of continued resistance by Ukraine. Ukraine has, he believes, no hope of ever ejecting the Russians from its territory — so why continue the sacrifice?
Trump has said nothing specific himself except that if elected he will end the war “on day one” which is widely believed will mean trying to force Ukraine to cede territory in return for peace. What then of Meloni? Unlike Trump and Musk, she has been and remains one of the most devout supporters of sending arms to Ukraine. But more than anyone else in Europe she might be able to influence Trump and Musk.
In general, though, Trump and Meloni are on the same page as right-wing populists or nationalists who are often branded “far right” or “fascist.” As Andrea Di Giuseppe, who represents Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party in America, told the news site Politico: “When it comes to working with Trump, she’s the only conservative among the founder members of the EU and large economies in Europe and her approach is very similar to Trump’s.”
In Musk, she now has as powerful a go-between as it is possible to imagine. As recently as September, they were sat next to each other at a gala dinner in Manhattan’s Ziegfeld Ballroom at which he presented her with this year’s Global Citizen Award from the Atlantic Council think tank.
Both are currently single and a photo of her looking at him at the dinner as if bewitched went viral and prompted the New York Post to speak of a “a very public love in.” Musk felt later compelled to deny any romantic attachment on X.
They may not be in love with each other but they are in love with each other’s ideas.
In his speech, Musk told the 700 guests present at the dinner that Meloni was “even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside.” In her speech, Meloni in turn said Musk was a “precious genius.”
What binds them above all is their belief that the West will die unless it reverses its suicidal failure to breed.
Italy’s population — for instance — has dropped by more than one million to 59.3 million since 2014. At the same time roughly one million migrants have arrived by sea to Italy. The fertility rate in Italy, a country once famous for making loads of bambini where mamma ruled the roost, is one of the lowest in the world at 1.3 (2.1 is the replacement rate). It’s not much better elsewhere in Europe.
Musk approves 100 percent of Meloni’s strategy to stop illegal migrants of bribing African countries such as Tunisia to prevent crossings across the Mediterranean. He is adamant like her that migrants are not the answer to demographic collapse. He also supports her new scheme to offshore in Albania migrants from safe countries such as Bangladesh — the main country of origin of Italy’s migrants — and thus in theory not refugees. The scheme which launched in October has been stopped dead by Italy’s judges who are refusing to allow the detention in Albania pending their deportation of these safe country migrants on the grounds that countries such as Bangladesh are not 100 percent safe.
On Tuesday Musk tweeted on X “these judges need to go” and in a subsequent tweet on Wednesday he said: “This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”
In the two years since being elected Meloni has become not just the leading political leader on the European right, but also the leading political leader in the European Union, especially now Emmanuel Macron is a lame duck and the government of Olaf Scholz has collapsed. Her relationship with Musk and Trump could well end up shaping the future of Europe in the years to come.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
