Argentina’s Javier Milei and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni Have a Ball at Trump Inauguration

President of Argentina Javier Milei and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appeared to spend much of their time together during President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, unprecedented head of state guests at the swearing in of an American president.

President Trump’s January 20 inauguration marked the first presidential inauguration in U.S. history that featured international heads of state among its guests. President Milei and Prime Minister Meloni, both of whom maintain friendly ties with the United States and President Trump, were among the select group of invitees.

Argentine outlets reported on Monday that Milei and Meloni met during the inauguration proceedings and shared a friendly conversation amid laughter 

Upon taking office in December, Milei and Meloni reinforced ties between Argentina – home to a large Italian diaspora population – and Italy. The heads of state held several bilateral meetings in Rome and Buenos Aires throughout 2024. Argentina is home to the largest population of Italian nationals outside of Italy and 70 percent of its population has some degree of Italian ancestry. In February 2024, Milei said that he is “75 percent Italian” as three of his grandparents were Italian.

The friendly ties between Milei and Meloni have been the subject of a wide array of memes and jokes among Argentine social media users, who have jokingly gossiped about a “romance” between them.

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A post shared by Giorgia Meloni (@giorgiameloni)

In December, during Milei’s latest visit to Rome, Prime Minister Meloni granted Italian citizenship to Milei and his sister Karina Milei through an expedited process by right of descent. Italian law allows descendants of Italian nationals to apply for citizenship if one of their ancestors was an Italian national at the time of their birth. During Meloni’s visit to Buenos Aires in November, the Argentine president gifted her a small figurine of himself wielding the iconic chainsaw widely used to represent Milei’s government fiscal deficit-slashing policies.

Milei joked in December that, “if Meloni asks me” he would consider accompanying her in a hypothetical formula as prime minister with her as president of Italy now that he has Italian citizenship — but that in the meantime he has to “solve some problems in Argentina.”

Prime Minister Meloni wished President Trump well during his new term in a message on Monday from his inauguration. She wrote that she was certain that their friendship and shared values would continue to strengthen the collaboration between both nations.

“Italy will always be committed to strengthening the dialogue between the United States and Europe as an essential pillar for the stability and growth of our communities,” Meloni’s message read.

Similarly, President Milei published a message in which he described President Trump’s inauguration as a “historic moment for the United States and for the entire free world.”

“Those of us who defend life, liberty and property of all human beings are happy to see that the ideas that we defend since December 10, 2023 in Argentina have triumphed again in the United States by the hand of President Trump,” Milei’s message read.

“Know that you will always count on the Argentine Republic to defend the values that made the West the greatest civilization feat in the history of mankind,” Milei continued. “May God bless the Argentines and the Americans, may the forces of heaven be with us and may the whole world know that everything is going according to plan.”

The Argentine president concluded his message with his widely famous catchphrase, “Long live liberty, damn it!”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.