Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni has announced the end of her relationship with her longtime partner, TV journalist Andrea Giambruno. "Our paths have diverged for some time and it is time to acknowledge it," Meloni said in an Instagram post. The diversion of their paths may have been accelerated by lewd and sexist remarks Giambruno made to female colleagues. In an off-air video excerpt broadcast this week by another show on the network Giambruno works for, Giambruno touches his groin and makes suggestive remarks to a colleague, reports Reuters.
In an audio excerpt, Giambruno can be heard talking about an affair and apparently suggesting group sex with his colleagues. Meloni defended Giambruno last month after he said women should avoid getting drunk if they want to avoid being raped, the Guardian reports. His conduct, however, was increasingly making him a political liability for Meloni, reports the Financial Times. "After those videos, it was very hard for her not to do something," said Azzurra Rinaldi, director of the La Sapienza University's School of Gender Economics. "It was too disrespectful—not something you can accept. She had no other option." Meloni and Giambruno have a 7-year-old daughter.
Meloni—often described as Italy's most right-wing leader since Mussolini—became the country's first female prime minister a year ago. Rinaldi says her decision to dump Giambruno has helped her image among women, though it could alienate the conservative men "who are most of her voters." Meloni, 46, was brought up by a single mother after her father abandoned the family. In her Instagram post, she said she had been with Giambruno for almost a decade and thanked him for the "splendid years" they had. "I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a 7-year-old girl who loves her mother and loves her father, as I was unable to love mine," she said. (More Giorgia Meloni stories.)
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