Trump reignites feud with Giorgia Meloni with meme calling for restraining order against Italian PM

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump appears far from ready to bury the hatchet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, keeping their increasingly public feud firmly in the spotlight.

The 80-year-old president once again added fuel to his feud with Meloni by provoking her with a bizarre meme just days after she visited the US embassy in Rome to celebrate America's 250th birthday and hailed the bond between the two nations.

Trump shares image of Giorgia Meloni appearing to admire him

Trump took to his Truth Social on Sunday, July 5, to share an altered image of 49-year-old Meloni looking upward at him.

“Restraining order needed,” he wrote in the caption, implying that the Italian leader is obsessed with him.

The bizarre meme came amid Trump's post-Fourth of July social media frenzy on Sunday, as he posted more than 100 times on Truth Social over the course of just eight hours.

The social media spree featured an eclectic mix of posts, including an image of Trump arm-wrestling Hulk Hogan, photos of him delivering speeches superimposed onto landmarks such as Mount Rushmore, and a throwback photo from the early 1990s with Marla Maples and Macaulay Culkin.

Trump also posted an AI-generated picture of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama boarding Air Force One; the photo showed “BLM” and Obama’s slogan “Yes We Can” spray-painted onto the plane, as well as some Arabic writing.

Trump’s feud with Giorgia Meloni

Once close allies, Trump and Meloni have been locked in a very furious public spat since last month, when he suggested that she was desperate to get a photo with him during the G7 summit in France.

“She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her,” the POTUS told Italian broadcaster La7. “She begged me to take a picture with her. She wanted a picture with me so ​badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.”

Meloni denounced Trump’s claims shortly after in a social media video, saying in Italian that she was “astonished” by the 80-year-old's “completely made-up” statements.

“I don’t ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this toward his allies, and it’s not the first time. I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence,” she said. “There is one thing he should remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.”

In response, Trump unleashed a tirade on Truth Social against his former “friend,” claiming she was “doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity” and criticizing the country's response to his war on Iran.

Meloni fired back quickly on Instagram, saying that defending her country’s national interest “is exactly what I’ve always done.”