US President Donald Trump said Pope Leo XIV doesn’t understand Iran’s nuclear threat.
“He doesn’t understand and shouldn’t be talking about war, because he has no idea what’s happening,” he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in a brief phone interview Tuesday.
Trump also criticized Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for calling his comments about the pope “unacceptable.”
“It’s her who’s unacceptable, because she doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if they had the chance,” the president said.
Trump, who’s previously complimented Meloni, said he was “shocked” by the prime minister. “I thought she was brave, but I was wrong,” he said, going on to lament Italy’s lack of support in the US war with Iran and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Meloni defended her disagreements with the Trump administration on Tuesday.
“When you’re friends and have allies, especially if they’re strategic, you also have to have the courage to say when you disagree, which is what I do every day, because I believe this is beneficial for Europe, the United States, and the West in general,” she said.
And Italy’s foreign minister defended Meloni’s defense of the pope.
“Until today, President Trump considered Giorgia Meloni a courageous person. He was not mistaken because she is a woman who never shies away from saying what she thinks. And on Pope Leo XIV, she said exactly what all of us Italian citizens think,” Antonio Tajani wrote on X.
Source: CNN
-- Agencies
