"I'm here with a fantastic woman," Donald Trump declared. "She's really taken Europe by storm."
That was what the US president-elect reportedly told members at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago golf club as he stood alongside Giorgia Meloni this month.
The Italian prime minister is one of just a handful of world leaders to have been invited to Trump HQ since his election victory last November — a significant development as some of her counterparts in Europe jostle for the incoming president's attention.
Meloni has also forged a close relationship with billionaire entrepreneur and Trump financier and adviser Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company has been talking to Italy about a controversial $2.4 billion deal to use its satellite system for secure government communications.
Musk has met with Meloni in Rome several times, and when presenting her with an award in the US last year he described her as, "someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside" and "authentic, honest and thoughtful".
In response, Meloni said Musk was a "precious genius".
In Europe, many analysts are now dissecting how she became so close to two of the world's most powerful men and, crucially, whether it will it make a difference to either Italy or Europe during Trump administration 2.0.
Could Meloni be Europe's 'Trump whisperer'?
Meloni is seen by some as a strong European ally for Trump, given her conservative credentials and the stability of the right-wing coalition she controls.
The 47-year-old became Italy's first female prime minister just two years ago, but has emerged as a political force within the European Union (EU) after her Brothers of Italy Party performed strongly in the European parliamentary election last June.
She is against mass immigration and opposes LGBTQI+, surrogacy and abortion rights, and has filed defamation suits in courts to try to silence critics.
Tommaso Foti, Italy's EU and Regional Affairs Minister, said the Mar-a-Lago meeting showed Italy could act as "a diplomatic bridge between two worlds: the European Union and the USA".
Some commentators have even hypothesised that Meloni could be the bloc's "Trump whisperer".
However, analysts in Rome who spoke to the ABC said they did not think that would necessarily be the case.
Teresa Coratella from the European Council on Foreign Relations' Rome office said Ms Meloni was one of "the more visible admirers of Trump in Europe".
"But even with the best relations with the upcoming US president and even if Meloni has this great relationship with Elon Musk, Italy will have a lot of issues with the new US administration," Ms Coratella said.
"Italy's economic stability today is very fragile, and we know that for Trump, economic relations will be a major part of his next presidency, especially on tariffs, and Italy will be among the most exposed countries on that regard."
She said Italy's low spending on defence would also be an issue for the incoming president.
Trump has been highly critical of European nations' contributions to NATO and has said they should increase their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP.
According to NATO data from 2024, none of the security alliance's 32 members are currently spending close to that amount.
Poland spends the most by share of gross domestic product (GDP) at 4.1 per cent, followed by Estonia at 3.4 per cent, and the US at 3.3 per cent.
"Italy will never manage to meet Trump's new request," Ms Coratella said.
"Italy probably next year might reach, if everything goes well, 1.6 per cent, which is very far from what Trump is expecting from Europe."
With these issues in mind, Meloni will likely focus on her own country's interests before acting as a "Trump whisperer" for the wider EU, Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, said.
"I think it is very naive to assume that she's going to be whispering on behalf of the European Union — she's going to be whispering on behalf of herself," Professor Tocci told the ABC.
"There are at least these two big issues, the economy and defence, where Trump is very unhappy with Italy, so she will want to use any credit that she has on a personal level on behalf of a national cause, given that she's a nationalist leader."
European leaders court Trump
Professor Tocci said if the EU needed a leader to be a bridge to the White House during the second Trump administration, the other potential candidates presented complications too.
"It's difficult to see [French President] Emmanuel Macron actually in that role given he has been weakened so significantly politically," she said.
Macron's decision to call a snap election last year resulted in a gridlocked parliament and France's worst political crisis in a generation.
Just three months later, the French prime minister Michel Barnier was ousted in a vote of no confidence, after trying to push through a budget without parliamentary approval.
In the same week, Macron rolled out an actual red carpet for the US president-elect in Paris for a meeting ahead of the grand reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, in what many perceived as a sign that he was trying to protect his credibility abroad as it was crumbling at home.
Macron also arranged a meeting between himself, Trump, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on the same day.
One of the president-elect's strongest foreign allies is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who also happens to hold the rotating EU presidency until the middle of this year.
However, Orban is close with Russian President Vladimir Putin — a relationship that has angered other EU leaders due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Poland will take over the EU presidency next, which could provide centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk with a platform for liaising with Washington on behalf of the bloc.
"I rather think that there is a role to be played by Poland, especially as far as Ukraine defence is concerned," Professor Tocci said.
"Because Poland is this year spending 4.7 per cent GDP on defence, so there are quite a few brownie points there that Tusk could spend, although the personal relationship between Trump and Tusk is not a very good one.
"And then, of course, there is the big question of Germany. What's going to happen after the election?"
Germans will head to the polls in a general election on February 23.Conservative Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to become the next chancellor, has pledged to spend more on defence but not as much as Trump has demanded, and Merz's hope of engaging in free trade talks when the incoming president is talking tariffs also puts them at odds.
Elon Musk's influence
The rise of the far-right in German politics may also weaken Merz, and it is being fuelled in part by Trump's close ally Musk.
The billionaire has been accused of trying to influence the election campaign, by repeatedly endorsing the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is running second in the polls.
Musk, who claims the AfD is Germany's "only hope", has been increasingly injecting himself into European politics more broadly too.
He has called for the UK's Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to resign and has argued that only Reform UK, the populist, right-wing political party led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, can "save Britain".
And in Italy his company SpaceX is in talks with the government over a possible contract using its Starlink technology to provide secure communications between government and defence officials on sensitive matters.
Which brings us back to Meloni.
In her first major press conference of the year last week, the Italian PM confirmed her good relationship with Musk, but said she had not spoken personally with him about the five-year, $2.4 billion communications deal.
"I evaluate foreign investments through a single lens, which is the lens of national interest, not friendships or political ideas of those who may invest," Meloni told journalists.
The potential deal has been sharply criticised by opposition parties questioning whether the handling of such communications should be entrusted to a Musk company.
During the same press conference, the Italian PM also spoke of her working relationship with Trump.
She confirmed she had been invited to the president-elect's January 20 inauguration in Washington and was keen to fit it into her schedule.
She dismissed speculation that he would stop supporting Ukraine and try to force it to accept an unfavourable deal to end its almost three-year war with Russia.
"I do not expect a disengagement by the United States from Ukraine," Meloni said.
"Trump has the ability to balance diplomacy and deterrence and I predict that this will be the case this time too."
Meloni has been a strong supporter of Ukraine and met with President Zelenskyy in Rome this week, where she reiterated her support for his country.
At the press conference, she also sought to allay concerns that the incoming US president might use military or economic action to try to acquire the Panama Canal and Greenland as he indicated last week.
She added that President-elect Trump was simply flagging that he would not let key strategic concerns close to the United States fall under the sway of foreign competitors, such as China.
Meloni's only criticism of the new American leader was over his pledge to impose tariffs on global imports into the United States, but she remained optimistic a deal could be done.
"I think tariffs are not the right solution, but I believe that solutions can be found by talking with EU partners and the USA," she said.
The Europe Donald Trump will encounter at the start of his second presidency is very different from the one that existed during his first.
For all the discussion over who he might align with in Europe, Ms Coratella said he may end up deciding not to lean on any one leader over another.
"Probably President Trump will have a very mercurial approach towards European leaders, a very ad hoc approach," she said.
"He might choose to talk to Meloni on some specific dossier, then he might wake up and turn to Macron on other things, to the next German chancellor, or to Poland — it would be more like la carte relations with European leaders."
As European leaders work out how they are going to navigate Trump 2.0, it is also entirely possible that the president-elect himself is not giving the matter nearly as much thought as they are.
"Is Trump even still going to be interested in any kind of constructive relationship with Europe? Or are we basically going to be, on the one hand, left alone on security and defence and on the other be engaged in a trade war with the United States?" Professor Tocci said.
"The desire on the side of Europe is obviously you would want to keep the US involved in security and we would want to have a constructive relationship on trade but it kind of takes two to tango and there may not be a tango dancer sitting in Washington very soon."
