PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen sided with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni after the latter traded barbs with U.S. President Donald Trump in a public spat.
The Italian leader shot back at the American president over the weekend after Trump mocked her for supposedly “begging” him for a photograph at a recent G7 meeting. He also accused her of exploiting their relationship for domestic political gain. Meloni said Trump made up the incident and told him to mind his own business.
“He was very insulting, so I fully understand Giorgia Meloni’s reaction, which is one of national pride,” Le Pen said in an interview with French radio France Culture on Wednesday. “Is this a definitive break between the two nations? Certainly not. Is this a severe cooldown of the relationship between the two individuals? Most certainly,” she added.
Some figures within Le Pen’s far-right party, the National Rally, have expressed their admiration of Trump and his political instincts. Her protégé, National Rally President Jordan Bardella, once openly praised Trump but recently criticized him in an exclusive interview with POLITICO.
But Le Pen has embraced the long-running French political tradition of keeping Washington at arm’s length and kept her distance from Trump.
“One doesn’t have friends when it comes to foreign relations,” said Le Pen. “One has interests, which can be common interests or conflicting ones.”
She said Trump was “undoubtedly the symbol of some form of political will [that] one has barely seen in Europe for decades” but that he “did the opposite of what he promised” on foreign affairs, most notably on the Iran war, which has widened a growing rift between the U.S. administration and the European far right.