Giorgia Meloni’s partner invited a colleague for a foursome – now it’s over Joe Biden and the new “Axis of Evil”

“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost ten years, is over,” Giorgia Meloni wrote yesterday on her Facebook page and other social media. She illustrated the text with a selfie from happier days: she and her partner beamed into the mobile phone camera together with Ginevra, who was about a year old at the time. “Our paths have been parted for some time and the time has come to take note of this,” the Italian head of government added in her post. Meloni, 46, and Giambruno, 42, were not married.

The immediate reason for the divorce were vulgar insults towards colleagues that TV man Giambruno uttered in the Mediaset studios, where he moderates a talk show. The sexual harassment took place before and after the broadcast, with cameras and open microphones still running – which Giambruno apparently did not notice.

The recordings were broadcast in recent days by the satirical program ‘Striscia la NOTEIA’ – also produced by Berlusconi broadcaster Mediaset. They showed the government partner giving a colleague unwanted compliments, stroking her hair and inviting her to join him and other colleagues in a ‘threesome’ or a ‘foursome’ – that was one of the few bad statements.

Giambruno has made headlines several times

The recordings from the TV studio were probably the famous straw that broke the camel’s back for Giorgia Meloni. “Mr. Meloni,” as Giambruno was jokingly known, had repeatedly made headlines in recent months with verbal blunders. For example, he recently compared the arrival of tens of thousands of boat people with the ‘transumanza’, or traditional transhumance pastoralism. Therefore, he placed the refugees on the same level as animals.

He also caused protests with his statement that women should not get drunk if they do not want to be raped. He became an icon of climate deniers with the statement that it is not news to him “when it is hot in the summer”. At the time, all of Italy was experiencing a heat wave with temperatures above 40 degrees.

Giambruno, who always wore a lot of hair gel, had long since become a burden to Meloni – and so the divorce ultimately did not come as much of a surprise. Nevertheless, it dominated the headlines in Italy yesterday, even ignoring the conflict in the Middle East. The public separation between a prime minister and her partner was unprecedented – after Meloni herself became the first woman to lead the Italian government. (bzbasel.ch)