The ‘worst thing’: Meloni interpreter apologizes after stumble at White House

Giorgia Meloni’s interpreter has apologized for faltering during a high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump earlier this week, prompting the Italian prime minister to jump in and translate her own comments about NATO and defense spending.

Valentina Maiolini-Rothbacher, who was interrupted by Meloni when providing a translation at the White House meeting on Thursday, said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the mishap was the “worst thing that can happen to an interpreter, a terrible setback.”

Footage of the meeting shows President Trump asking Maiolini-Rothbacher for a translation of Meloni’s response to a question from an Italian journalist about his position on Ukraine and military spending. Maiolini-Rothbacher appears to struggle with the translation, pausing several times and looking through her notes, before Meloni cuts her off and speaks to Trump in English. 

The interpreter said in the interview with Corriere della Sera that such a calamity has never happened to her before. “I’m sorry above all for not having been useful,” she said.

“President Meloni was right to interrupt me, it was a very important meeting and every word carried great weight,” Maiolini-Rothbacher said. “She wanted to be perfectly understood by Donald Trump.”

Maiolini-Rothbacher said in the interview that although she had not been to the White House before, she is an experienced interpreter and has worked at high-level meetings including the G20. She has worked as an interpreter since 1991, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She has not spoken with Meloni since the meeting, she said, adding that she went straight to the airport from the White House after the session. According to Corriere della Sera, she is currently by the sea in the Santa Marinella area. 

Trump said in response to Meloni’s comments, once she gave them, that he does not hold Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responsible for the war in Ukraine, but added that he is “not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started.”

Meloni met the next day with U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Rome.