Elon Musk offered effusive praise for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in brief remarks at an awards ceremony in New York, the latest sign of cosiness between a billionaire who’s trying to get Donald Trump elected and a European leader at odds with her Group of Seven allies.
Musk, bestowing an Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award on Meloni, said it was an honour to present the accolade to “someone who is even more beautiful on the inside than she was on the outside.”
“She’s also someone who is authentic, honest, truthful – and that can’t always be said about politicians,” Musk added.
The remarks were in keeping with the warm relationship between Musk and Meloni, whose political roots on the right align her with Trump, even as she’s backed the G-7’s support of Ukraine in its struggle against the Russian invasion.
At a festival organized by Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party in December, Musk exhorted the crowd to “make more Italians” and warned of unchecked migration while addressing Italy’s birth rate, which is the lowest in Europe.
Meloni has refrained from backing either Trump or his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she will work closely with whoever occupies the White House, given long-standing ties between the two countries.
After Musk spoke, Meloni delivered an implicit rebuke to the left, lamenting the desire to “to violently erase the symbols of our civilizations in the US as in Europe.”
“I know that we should not be ashamed to use and defend words and concepts like nation and patriotism, words that mean more than a physical place,” Meloni said. “They mean a state of mind to which one belongs.”
Meloni is in New York with leaders from more than 190 other nations for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. On Sunday, she met with Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman, the chief executives of Alphabet Inc. And OpenAI Inc.
The choice to give a Global Citizen Award to the prime minister, and have Musk present it, has angered some former and current Atlantic Council staff, Politico reported last week, given the dissonance between their views on Ukraine and immigration.
Meloni received the award “for her strong support of the EU and becoming the first female prime minister of Italy,” according to a media package distributed by the Atlantic Council.
Musk has business interests in Italy. He and Meloni have scheduled a closed-door meeting later this month to discuss investment opportunities in Italy’s space and artificial intelligence sectors, according to people familiar with the matter.
Italy approved a new regulatory framework in June that grants foreign space companies permission to operate in the country, a move that it expects to generate investments of about €7.3 billion ($8.1 billion).
Italy is already serviced by Musk’s Starlink, which delivers broadband internet through a global network of more than 6,000 satellites operated by his Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
Meloni has also expressed interest in artificial intelligence, though she sounded a note of caution about the technology in a speech to the United Nations Summit of the Future earlier Monday. She called AI a “great multiplier” but warned it could widen global imbalances.
“Machines will not answer this question,” she said. “Politics must guarantee that artificial intelligence remains controlled by humans and keeps humans at the centre.”
