Trump Puppeteers Hiding In Plain Site In Italy, Hungary And More
N.Y. Times columnist Michelle Goldberg explained her feelings of dread on the eve of what could be the most important election in U.S. history.
“This awful liminal period is like waiting for the results of a biopsy, and it’s hard to reason clearly about the future until there’s a prognosis,” Goldberg wrote.
I would say it feels more like tumbling slow motion into a dank, black, bottomless hole, and then seeing there is a bottom as it comes closer and faster each second,(as in the light at the end of a tunnel is an oncoming freight train) while I try to grab something to slow down or brace for the fall but find it is futile as I watch as millions of others also are cascading toward oblivion.
I am also feeling powerless and manipulated by major, behind the scenes puppeteers like Elon Musk, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orbán, Steve Bannon and lesser known conspirators like Francesco Giubilei. Even if Kamala Harris is elected, the puppeteers will go on with their shrouded plans, preparing for the next Titanic battle when they may win.
Musk is the controversial, super trumper, billionaire owner of “X,” Tesla and Space-X. Meloni is the right wing prime minister of Italy and Orbán is the authoritarian ruler of Hungary. All are major trump supporters. Orbán, Europe’s biggest trump cheerleader, visited Moscow and Beijing in July and then stopped for a visit at trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. And they all have been popular attendees at the far right, Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), held regularly in the U.S. as an unapologetic trump fanbase.
Giubilei
Giubilei is an Italian writer and key figure in the transnational far-right movement with ties to neo-fascists. The State Department has invited Giubilei, 32, to tour and speak in the U.S. this month as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP).
The IVLP invites as many as 5,000 emerging leaders from around the world to the United States each year for programs lasting up to three weeks. Participants are nominated by staff at U.S. embassies and have included presidents and prime ministers from around the world.
It was unclear why Giubilei was chosen for the fellowship, but the watchdog, non-profit, Council for Global Equality (CGE) said the U.S. Embassy in Italy most likely nominated him. The CGE warned that Giubilei’s selection is “a part of a growing influence of the global far right on American institutions.”
The selection of Giubilei “is bolstering the credentials of those that promote Christian nationalism and oppose the rights of LGBTQI+, women, and other vulnerable populations.”
CGE is a coalition of U.S.-based human rights and LGBTQI+ advocacy organizations that encourage a clear U.S. voice for the human rights of LGBTQI+ communities around the world.
A statement from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said that Giubilei is head of the far right Italian propaganda think tank, Nazione Futura, which is similar to far-right, trump supporting think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute. GPAHE said topics addressed in Giubilei’s books “reveal not only an interest in contemporary far-right politics, but also a deep knowledge of — and fluency in — the language and ideas of historical fascism.”
“Within Europe, Giubilei and the Nazione Futura are central to a network of propaganda organizations supporting the authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and elites close to major European far-right parties,” GRAPHE said.
Giubilei and associates went to the CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. in February. They met with several American far-right groups such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), the Heritage Foundation, responsible for creating the rights-stripping Project 2025, and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), formed from former Trump administration officials that has been described as a “White House in waiting.”
Giubilei said he attended the CPAC conference to “build a network of the conservative world in Europe and the West, a project that we have been working on for years but are intensifying in advance of the European elections and the U.S. presidential election.”
Giubilei hopes to host the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in Rome.
Giubilei also is leader of the far-right Italian political party Fratelli d’Italia’s (Brothers of Italy, FdI), the country’s ruling party. The party is led by Meloni, Italy’s prime minister since 2022. Rolling Stone Italia described Giubilei as “Meloni’s Millennial intellectual.”
Some Fdl party leaders have been nostalgic for Italian fascism, including Roman salutes. Some party members have celebrated the dictator Benito Mussolini, with fascist memorabilia in some local offices. Some members of the Mussolini family have run for FdI, such as Rachele Mussolini, granddaughter of Mussolini, for the City Council of Rome, and Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, great-grandson of Mussolini, for the 2019 European Parliament election.
Giubilei said he wants closer relationships with trump. He has expressed support for trump in the coming presidential election, has praised trump on foreign policy, and described him as a model.
Giubilei has master’s degree in culture and history and attended summer schools at the London School of Journalism and the CUNY Graduate School in New York. He wrote his first book, Giovinezza. Partitura per mandolin e canto, when he was 13 years old, was 16 when he founded his first publishing house and in 2013, he founded a second publishing house.
Giubilei has been a contributor for several media outlets, including The American Conservative, which was founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell and Taki Theodoracopulos. Theodoracopulos was a frequent critic of Israel who wrote an article in 2018, commemorating D-Day and praising the Wehrmacht, the Nazi armed forces. Theodoracopulos is described as having expressed racist views directed against West Indians, Puerto Ricans, and Jews, among others.
The American Conservative is another link with trump at it is a member of advisory board of Project 2025, considered as a far right, blueprint for a second trump administration.
Since January 2018, Giubilei has been the president of the Tatarella Foundation, which was founded in memory to Giuseppe Tatarella, deputy prime minister in the first cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 1995. Tatarella worked for the local branches of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party that was launched by Mussolini’s followers in 1946.
In 2019, Giubilei was listed by Forbes among the top 100 most influential under-30 people in Italy.
Meloni
Meloni is hoping for a trump victory and has been cultivating an image on “becoming a European ally less toxic than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán — a sort of Maggie Thatcher to his Ronald Reagan, to use a highly imperfect analogy,” according to a story in Politico.
“She is by far in Italy the closest politician to Trump,” said Marco Damilano, an Italian political analyst. “And on the European level, her government would be best positioned” to build ties with the trump administration.
Meloni’s tenure has been described as the “most right-wing” republican government in Italy since World War II, while her time in government has been described as a shift towards the far-right in Italian politics. Meloni’s government and her Fdl party have failed to distance themselves from the country’s fascist past.
The party’s platform reflects many of the trump policies, including opposing euthanasia and abortion, “anti-gay marriage” and the LGBTQ+ community, calling for a blockade migrants from reaching Italian ports and boosting the birth rate of Italian nationals to ease the need for migrant labor.
Among its anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ policies, the Meloni party recently banned surrogacy by Italian citizens anywhere in the world, which would make it impossible for certain LGBTQ+ couples to be recognized as parents or to have children.
Meloni and leading members of the FdI claim to be mainstream conservatives but observers have described it as right-wing populist, neo-fascist, post-fascist, nativist and anti-immigrant.
Nicola Procaccini, who co-leads Meloni’s faction in the European Parliament, said, “We hope that Trump will win.”
Procaccini hedged his comments in an interview before President Joe Biden decided not to run for a second term. “Obviously Giorgia is also the leader of the Italian government and she has a very good relationship with the president of the United States, Joe Biden,” Procaccini said.
Antonio Giordano, a representative of Meloni’s Italian party apparatus, has been lobbying for support from Republicans in the U.S. Giordano, a member of the Italian parliament, attended this summer’s Republican National Convention. He said Meloni would be the “natural interlocutor” for trump if he “wants to understand how to better deal with Europe.”
Another lobbyist for Meloni’s party is businessman Andrea Di Giuseppe, a member of the Italian parliament who became an American citizen in 2011 and lives in Miami, Fla. In 2021, Di Giuseppe was elected president of Committees of Italians Abroad (COMITES), Miami. In 2022 he was elected coordinator of the INTERCOMITES, which oversees the various COMITES. The COMITES represent Italian citizens residing abroad, about consular offices, and allow Italian citizens to actively participate in their communities.
The European Commission has been concerned that Meloni could lead Italy towards Hungary under Orbán, its authoritarian prime minister. Orbán and trump have been outspoken supporters of each other. Meloni was the guest at Orbán’s gathering of conservative figures in Budapest last September. The two leaders condemned Russia’s aggression in Ukraine although Orbán had previously been lukewarm in his support of Ukraine.
Prior to her election as prime minister, Meloni attended many U.S. political gatherings where trump was speaking and praised him as an inspiration for Italian politics. In early 2020, she was a guest of trump’s at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
Meloni was a favorite when she attended the 2020 and CPAC gatherings. Orban also has addressed CPAC’s annual meetings. CPAC has been a forum for trump and the far right in the U.S. and elsewhere. Meloni was a guest at the conference in February 2022.
Elon Musk
Trump associates have also travelled to Italy. Steve Bannon, trump’s former strategic adviser who was recently released from prison, was the keynote speaker at Meloni’s Atreju political festival in 2018. Musk was the main guest at the 2023 Atreju festival, where he spoke in favor of Meloni’s plan to curb illegal immigration and encouraged Italian women to have more babies.
Musk was among the guests of the annual Fdl party convention in 2023. Others included British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and Spanish right-wing leader Santiago Abascal.
Musk presented Meloni with the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizen Award on Sept. 23 at the United Nations in New York City. The Atlantic Council is a think tank in the field of international affairs, founded in 1961. Meloni was honored in recognition of “her groundbreaking role as Italy’s first female prime minister, her strong support of the European Union and the transatlantic alliance, and her 2024 chairmanship of the Group of Seven.”
Meloni has developed a strong bond with Musk, who has been tapped by trump to have a seat at the cabinet to lead “drastic reforms” of the federal government in case of victory.