The home front can many times be the Achilles’ heel of world leaders – and often, a family can be destroyed by the sheer pressure of the geopolitical forces around it.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was led to power by a conservative movement in defense of the traditional family. Now, she sees her marriage crumble in the middle of her premiership as she vows to protect her family – and especially her daughter – from the ensuing damage.
The Prime Minister revealed on Friday that she has separated from her partner/husband Andrea Giambruno.
The television journalist Giambruno has been heavily criticized in recent weeks for his comments on Italian TV.
Just last month, Meloni was still telling reporters that she would not be judged over her husband’s remarks and that, in the future, she would not answer questions about his behavior anymore.
Meloni’s split comes as she celebrates her first year in office.
Reuters reported:
“‘My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost 10 years, ends here’, Meloni wrote on her social media accounts. ‘Our paths have diverged for some time, and the time has come to acknowledge it’, she added.
Meloni said she would not be distracted by difficulties in her private life, saying, ‘all those who hoped to weaken me by striking me at home’, would have no success.”
Meloni and Giambruno met in 2014 in a TV studio, and have a seven-year-old daughter.
Giambruno is the presenter of a news program transmitted by a media group owned by the heirs of the late Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister and Meloni ally.
“This week, another Mediaset satirical current affairs television show broadcast off-air video excerpts from Giambruno’s program showing him using foul language, touching his groin and appearing to make advances to a female colleague. ‘Why didn’t I meet you before?’, he asks her.
In a second audio recording aired on Thursday, Giambruno is heard talking about being in an affair and telling female colleagues they can work with him if they take part in group sex.”
Meloni made sure to be very civil, and it becomes clear that protecting her daughter is a big priority.
“’I thank him for the wonderful years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through and for giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Ginevra’, Meloni wrote. ‘Our paths have diverged for some time and it is time to acknowledge it’.”
It shows some remarkable self-control, since the last controversies involving her now former husband are hard for any woman to stomach, never mind a powerful one.
“In the first off-air clip, broadcast by another show, Giambruno complains about criticisms of his hairstyle before telling his female colleague: “Why didn’t I meet you before?” In the second recording, he is heard telling a female colleague that they need another participant on the show. “Let’s have a threesome, even a foursome,” he said.
In September, Meloni defended Giambruno after he said women should ‘avoid getting drunk’ if they wanted to avoid being raped. He made the remarks on air after a series of high-profile rape cases. At the time, Meloni said his words had been misinterpreted and that while they were ‘hasty’, they were similar to what her mother had told her, which was to ‘keep your eyes peeled and head screwed on’.”
In the middle of the political storm, Meloni added something I found very touching in her announcement, that she would ‘defend who we [the couple] were, I will defend our friendship and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old who loves her mother and father in a way I could not love mine’.
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Meloni vowed to defend families as a political leader. Now, it is her greatest priority to defend her own family in a time of crisis.