The divorce of a ruler should merit no more than a brief separation, but the case of the Italian Prime Minister deserves more attention. Like her far-right party, 46-year-old Giorgia Meloni is a defender of traditional family values. However, he maintained a nearly 10-year relationship with television presenter Andrea Giambruno, 42, out of wedlock, from which a 7-year-old daughter was born. But more serious than the contradiction between what he defends in public and what he practices in private, the relationship has been affected by the partner’s controversial comments, to the point that last month he said not to respond to Giambruno’s statements.
The divorce was made public through a publication by Meloni on X. “Our paths have been separated for a long time and the time has come to put this on record,” he wrote. “I will defend what we were, I will defend our friendship and I will defend at all costs a 7-year-old girl who loves her mother and her father as I could not love mine,” as I recalled that her father left home when she was a baby. “Anyone who hoped to weaken me by hitting me at home should know that, however much the drop may hope to pierce the stone, the stone remains stone and the drop is but water,” he stated in an postscript.
As presenter of Diario del Giorno, Giambruno already attracted attention on Rete 4 (owned by Mediaset, owned by the Berlusconi family). Firstly in my comments on the statements of the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach. Complaining that climate change is “destroying southern Europe” and endangering tourism in Italy, Giambruno said: “If you don’t like it, stay home. You are in the Black Forest, you are doing well. You?”
In August things went from apparent xenophobia to sexism. After a gang rape of a 19-year-old girl in Palermo shocked Italian society, Giambruno added fuel to the fire by advising women not to drink to avoid rape. “If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk, there should be no misunderstanding about that. But if you avoid getting drunk and blacking out, you might also avoid some problems, because that’s where you end up .” meet the wolf,” he noted at the time.
Meloni, who met Giambruno in a TV studio when he took a banana from his hand – the publicity break during an interview was coming to an end and the journalist avoided an unusual situation – had already shown distance from his daughter’s father. But this week the shame crossed the line after a comedy programme, also from Mediaset, aired a video showing a conversation with a colleague in which she appears to flirt: “Why haven’t I met you before?”.
The next day, the same program revealed audio of conversations he had with co-workers in which he said he was having an affair and suggested they get together for group sex. “Vulgarity is impossible to comment on,” said deputy Marco Furfaro of the opposition Democratic Party. Poll analyst Antonio Noto told Reuters the case would have little impact on voting intentions, but should improve Meloni’s image.
Source: DN
