President Meloni: Thank you very much, Mr President, thank you for your warm welcome. Thank you for this occasion, which is aimed to strengthen our relations, our friendship, that comes from very far. You know today is April 17 and April 17 marks the anniversary of the agreement that allowed Cristoforo Colombo to make his trip and I say it to remember how ancient our ties are, but also to remind that we both share another fight, which is the fight against woke ideology that would like to erase our history, and I know that we share lots of things on tackling illegal migration, on fighting against synthetic drugs – you know Italy has been one of the nations that made a plan against fentanyl, for example. But we have been talking about many bilateral topics and things that we can do together – about defence, about economy, about space, about energy. Italy will have to increase its LNG imports; and also nuclear that we are trying to develop, I think there can be ways to work together. Italian enterprises will invest, as they’ve been doing for many years as you know, in the next years I think around 10 billion – that shows how interconnected our economies are. And that’s very important, Mr President, it’s not only about Italy, it’s about the entire Europe, the exchange between us is a very big one: investments, trade – it’s a topic that we are discussing in these weeks. 
At the end of the day, look, somebody calls me, I was saying it before, “Western nationalism” – I don’t know if it is the right word but I know that when I speak about the West mainly I don’t speak about a geographical space, I speak about a civilisation. And I want to make that civilisation stronger, so I think even if we have some problems between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is the time that we try to sit down and find solutions, so I want to thank President Trump for having accepted an invitation to pay an official visit to Rome in the near future and consider the possibility in that occasion to meet also with Europe. The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together.

President Trump: We can. 

President Meloni: And we will keep on working on that. I’m going to close. I want to say only I’m proud of sitting here as Prime Minister of an Italy that today has a very good situation, despite the difficulties. A stable country, a reliable country, 1 million more jobs in the last 2.5 years.

President Trump: That’s great.

President Meloni:  Inflation is going down. So, forgive me if I promote a bit my country, but you’re a businessman and you understand me.

President Trump: Sure, go ahead.  

President Meloni: So, migration flows going down 60%. So, we are trying to do our best, but I think we can do it even better together. Also on Ukraine - I will close - together we have been defending the freedom of Ukraine, together we can build a just and lasting peace. We support your efforts, Donald.

President Trump: Good.

President Meloni: Thank you.