Elon Musk heaped praise on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in brief remarks at an awards ceremony in New York, the latest sign of ease between a billionaire trying to get Donald Trump elected and a European leader at odds with his Group of Seven colleagues.
Musk presented Meloni with the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award, saying it was “an honour to bestow this award on someone who is even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside.”
“She is also a person who is authentic, honest, with integrity – and that can’t always be said about politicians,” Musk said.
The comments were in keeping with the warm relationship between Musk and Meloni, whose political roots are on the right wing, aligning him with Trump even as she has backed the G-7’s support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression.
At a festival organized by Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party in December, Musk implored the crowd to “make more Italians” and warned of uncontrolled migration while addressing Italy’s birth rate, one of the lowest in Europe.
Meloni has refrained from endorsing Trump or his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she would work closely with whoever sits in the White House given the long-standing ties between the two countries.
After Musk spoke, Meloni offered an implicit rebuke to the left, lamenting their desire to “violently erase the symbols of our civilizations in America 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 much more than a physical place,” Meloni said. “They mean a mental state to which one belongs.”
Meloni is in New York with leaders from more than 190 countries for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. On Sunday, he met with Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman, the chief executive officers of Alphabet Inc. and OpenAI Inc.
The choice to give the 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, noting inconsistencies between their views on Ukraine and immigration.
Meloni received the award “for his strong support of the European Union and for becoming Italy’s first female prime minister,” 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 in June approved a new regulatory framework that allows foreign space companies to operate in the country, a move it expects to attract about €7.3 billion ($8.1 billion) in investment.
Italy is already served by Musk’s Starlink, which provides 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 he sounded a note of caution about the technology in a speech at a UN summit on the future on Monday. He called AI the “great multiplier” but warned it could exacerbate global imbalances.
“Machines will not answer this question,” he said. “Politics must guarantee that artificial intelligence remains controlled by humans and puts humans at the centre.”
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