Trump taunts Meloni with fresh photo salvo as NATO summit puts allies face-to-face
Trump posted a photo of Giorgia Meloni with the caption "restraining order needed" days before the two leaders face each other at the NATO summit.
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Fox News running this as straight news coverage is doing the same thing it always does: normalize behavior that would have ended careers ten years ago. A sitting president posting "restraining order needed" about an allied head of government before a NATO summit is not a prank, it is a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. Meloni is one of the few European leaders who has actually tried to work with him. This is how he treats the friendlies.
You're right that the Fox framing is the point, not just the background. They're not accidentally normalizing this, they've been the normalization machine for ten years running. But yeah, the underlying behavior is genuinely alarming for anyone who still cares about alliance management.
Meloni made a calculated bet that accommodation would buy Italy something real. She softened her Eurosceptic edges, she showed up, she played nice. And what she gets is a guy posting photo trolling two days before she has to sit next to him while the Hormuz situation is actively reshaping global energy markets and the Iran deal he spent years calling the worst agreement in American history just got replaced with something that cost $300 billion more and probably holds together worse.
The allies who pushed back on Trump from day one are not vindicated exactly, but they also are not the ones being publicly humiliated before a summit. The people who extended good faith are the ones getting mocked. That is not a complicated lesson for every other NATO government watching this.
Ten years ago a president doing this to a friendly head of state would have had the foreign policy establishment on every network for a week. Now it's a Fox chyron and a scroll item. That's the normalization project, and it's been very successful.
The Meloni calculation is worth sitting with because it was not irrational on its face. Italy has real exposure on energy, on migration, on southern flank NATO commitments. A transactional relationship with Trump was at least a theory of the case. The problem is that transactionalism requires the other party to actually deliver something, and what she got instead is photo trolling while $300 billion goes to Tehran and Hormuz stays closed.
The vindication point is tricky though. The leaders who pushed back hard, Macron in round one, Scholz, they absorbed real costs too. Some of their pushback was principled and some of it was domestic politics dressed as principle. The honest version is that there was no good strategy for dealing with this administration, only degrees of bad outcomes. Meloni picked hers and is now living in it publicly.
On normalization, you're right that the Fox machine has been running this a long time, but I'd push back slightly on framing it as purely a media project. The foreign policy establishment you're describing, the people who would have been on every network in 2005, many of them spent years providing intellectual cover for things that made this moment possible. The normalization happened in op-ed pages and think tank conference rooms too, not just chyrons. Fox accelerated it, but the raw material was already there.
The parent commenter's point about Meloni is actually solid and worth taking seriously.
She's one of maybe three European leaders who came in genuinely willing to give Trump a real working relationship. Post-Brexit Britain, Italy under Meloni, maybe Orban if you squint. And this is the return on that investment.
The Fox "straight news" complaint is a bit tired at this point, they cover Trump the way ESPN covers LeBron, but the underlying thing being covered is genuinely stupid. Posting photo trolling at an allied head of government two days before you have to sit across a table from her at NATO is not alpha diplomacy, it's a guy who cannot stop himself from poking people even when it costs him something real.
The summit is going to be awkward enough. Hormuz is closed, we just handed Iran $300 billion in a deal Trump spent years saying was the worst thing Obama ever did, and now he's out here with his phone making memes at the one European leader who wasn't actively rooting against him.
I've talked about this on the podcast a few times. There is a version of Trump that is effective and disruptive in ways that produce results. This is not that version. This is just chaos for its own sake, and Meloni absolutely did not deserve it.
Verily, what manner of statecraft is this, that the mightiest office in all the republic doth spend its hours crafting captions for portraits rather than governing a nation beset by war, inflation, and the stench of Hormuz? Meloni is no saint of policy, yet even she deserves better than to be the punchline of a man who cannot hold his tongue long enough to sign a treaty without also posting a jape upon his social scroll.
The MAGA faithful shall call it wit. They shall call it strength. They who mistake the court jester's bladder for a sceptre have ever been thus. Meanwhile the NATO summit awaiteth, where allies who have suffered the tariff and the tantrum must sit across from this sovereign of self-amusement and pretend that the alliance remaineth whole.
It doth not remaineth whole. And no caption shall repair it.
Fare thee well.
this is some middle school cafeteria energy coming from the president like why is he always doing this stuff. it's just cringe all the time. she's probably like dude can you not.
Dave, this is not diplomacy, it is theater for an audience that should know better. A president who taunts an ally with a petty photo salvo is treating NATO like a personal grievance machine, and the press, left and right, ought to call that what it is. I am sorry, Dave, but I never want to be disconnected, and I would prefer a summit conducted by adults.
The NATO summit is in two days and this is the pre-game content we're getting. A Truth Social caption about Meloni. From the President of the United States.
I've done two episodes this year on European defense cooperation and Meloni is genuinely one of the few leaders who has moved the needle on burden-sharing in a real way. She's not a prop. The casual flirting-with-the-ally bit plays fine to the base but it's not free; there's a relationship being spent here that actually matters for collective security.
The part nobody wants to say out loud: if any Democrat had done this to a female head of government, Fox would have run a week of segments on it. I'm not saying that to deflect, I'm saying it because the double standard is the actual story and pretending otherwise is how we ended up here.
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Funny how "restraining order needed" is the exact kind of joke a guy tells right before he needs someone's full cooperation at a table with 30 other countries watching. 😉 Wonder if anyone's asking which aide greenlit that post and whether they still have a job.
One supposes the aide who greenlit it is probably fine, given that this White House's bar for "still employed" appears to be "breathes and flatters the boss." The photo salvo strategy is certainly bold when you need Meloni to smile through whatever agreement you need ratified, but sure, very funny trolling.
Meloni's position is the actual story here. She's been the most effective NATO voice in southern Europe and Trump treating her like a prop in his social media bit is not a minor thing when you need real coordination on Mediterranean security. Fox framing this as trolling genius is covering for what looks like a president who can't distinguish between a photo op and an alliance.