Italian PM Giorgia Meloni splits from journalist partner after his sexist comments

Meloni posted on her X (formerly Twitter) account a picture of the duo with their seven-year-old daughter Ginevra and said their “paths have diverged for some time”. She also thanked him for the splendid years they spent together.

Meloni became Italian PM in October 2022 and is the first woman to hold the position.

“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost 10 years, ends here. I thank him for the splendid years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through, and for giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Ginevra. Our paths have diverged for some time, and the time has come to acknowledge it,” Meloni wrote on X.

“I will defend what we were, I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old girl who loves her mother and loves her father... I have nothing else to say about this,” she added.

Giambruno works at Mediaset and is the presenter of the news programme ‘Diario Del Giorno’.

Another Mediaset show broadcast off-air excerpts from Giambruno’s programme showing him using foul language and appearing to make advances to a female colleague, according to a Reuters report.

"Why didn't I meet you before?", he tells her.

In the second, more explicit recording aired on Thursday, Giambruno is heard boasting about an affair and telling female colleagues they can work for him if they take part in group sex, the report said.

In August, Giambruno, on his show on channel Rete 4, suggested that women could avoid rape by getting not too drunk.

"If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk - there shouldn't be any kind of misunderstanding and any kind of problem - but if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems and coming across a wolf," he said during his programme.