Watching the images from the White House, with journalists in mystical ecstasy and pundits in a trance, all that was missing was the Rocky soundtrack and a tricolour waving behind the Lincoln Memorial. A scene worthy of an election commercial. Then I read the enthusiastic reports of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s trip to Washington, celebrated as a world-class stateswoman, and I began to fear I was suffering from some disturbance of perception.

So I decided to delve deeper, to really understand what concrete results came out of this ‘historic’ summit. Below is a list of the achievements of the leader of the Trumpian right in Italy and its unofficial representative in Europe:

• Beamingsmiles and exchange of compliments between sovereignists;
• No extra taxation on American web giants;
• US arms purchases, to the detriment of the European defence industry – starting with Leonardo, Italian excellence in the sector;
• American gas purchases, 35% more expensive than today; foreign EU supplies, with a direct impact on Italian companies, which already pay 4-5 times more for energy than their Spanish counterparts;
• Total silence on conflicts of interest in entrusting Elon Musk with the management of strategic sectors for western security;
• No mention of the war on tariffs, which is currently on hold after the billion-dollar losses incurred by US pension funds on the stock exchange;
• Commitment of Italian companies to invest EUR 10 billion in the US (how a government can make this possible remains to be seen);
• And finally, the possibility of a Trump visit to Rome, with a stop at the Colosseum and a Ben-Hur-style historical re-enactment, complete with gladiators and circus show.

On the other hand, there was full agreement on the condemnation of the ‘woke’ ideology, indicated as the main obstacle to the free market, economic development and the natural order of things. A new ideological fetish for a conservative church on crusade against the liberal danger.

The show ended with Giorgia Meloni wisely avoiding asking Trump in what sense ‘Europe was born to screw the United States of America’.

Curtain. Lights out.

PS. The only thing of note – the underlining of Russia as aggressor and Ukraine as attacked country – was said in Italian, without translation. For Donald Trump, who has difficulty even understanding English when pronounced with a non-American accent, Meloni could just as well have discussed the legality of pizza with pineapple or how creamy or solid the egg in carbonara should be.