Argentina’s president gifts Giorgia Meloni chainsaw-wielding figurine of himself
Javier Milei has been promising to slash the size of the state — and sees Italy's right-wing PM as an ideological ally.
Argentinian President Javier Milei presented Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with a bizarre gift: A chainsaw-wielding figurine of … himself.
Milei — a self-described anarcho-capitalist— took up an actual chainsaw as a rally prop during his successful 2023 presidential campaign, promising to slash the size of the state. A local media outlet published a photo of the odd gift on Wednesday evening.
Meloni, from the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, said Wednesday that Italy and Argentina would unite to “defend the identity of the West,” during a bilateral meeting in Buenos Aires.
The two joined the U.S. in recognizing opposition leader Edmundo González as Venezuela’s president-elect. Venezuelan incumbent ruler Nicolás Maduro, who won a disputed election in July that triggered protests and a deadly crackdown, is supported by Russia.
Milei credits himself as the inspiration behind U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a government-slashing task force to be jointly headed by MAGA acolytes Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.
He has called tech billionaire Musk “a hero in the history of humanity,” and recently advised him to “push it to the limit” with DOGE. Meloni, for her part, also had a love-in with Musk during an awards ceremony in New York in September.
Milei also became as the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his election victory, during a visit last week to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida
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