CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale fired back at President Donald Trump on Friday for his claims that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “begged” him for a photo, pointing out that Trump has a storied history of shaky claims about being beseeched for things, especially from former allies.
“We don’t know for certain who is telling the truth here,” Dale acknowledged Friday on CNN. “What we can say is that if Trump did make up the story, nobody should be shocked. The president has a years-long history of telling false or highly dubious tales about people having supposedly begged him for things.”
Dale detailed such instances after Trump accused Meloni, a one-time close ally, of “begging” him to take a photo with her at the G7 summit earlier this week. Meloni said Friday on social media that she was “astonished” by the “completely made up” claim.
“She begged me to take a picture with her,” Trump told Italian broadcaster La7 in an interview posted Friday by the channel, according to NBC News. “She wanted a photo with me so badly — I could have skipped it, but I felt sorry for her.”
Dale argued this is Trump’s “version of the old ‘you can’t fire me, I quit’” approach to save face, as Meloni had already broken with him over the Iran war and his criticisms of Pope Leo XIV. She added in her social media rebuke of Trump’s claim that “neither I nor Italy ever beg.”
Dale acknowledged that someone who has been wealthy and powerful for decades will “sometimes get begged for stuff,” but noted Trump has publicly accused various lawmakers of doing so on a regular basis since he entered the political sphere.
“Trump is particularly fond of making such claims when he is talking about someone who was once supportive of him but went on to criticize him or his policies, as the conservative Meloni did this year about the president’s war with Iran and tariff threats,” wrote Dale.
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Dale noted Trump claimed Cheri Jacobus, a Republican operative who said she left the GOP because of his 2016 nomination, had “Begged” him for a job. While Trump said he “Turned her down twice,” Jacobus later shared evidence that his staff had instead reached out to her.
Dale also cited the case of Brent Bozell, a conservative activist whom Trump claimed in 2016 came to his office “begging for money like a dog.” Bozell, now a Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to South Africa, decried this in his 2019 book, “Unmasked: Big Media’s War Against Trump.”
“Maybe because it wasn’t true?” Bozell wrote. “I had not gone to him for money; he’d invited me for lunch to discuss his potential campaign. I hadn’t groveled. I hadn’t even asked for money. He’d offered it. That tweet was just another day in the office for Trump.
He recalled, “I found myself laughing (my wife, Norma, found none of this humorous).”