Tajani with the Maga cap, Forza Italia against Bonaccini: «Fake photo»

A post with the writing "Never been Trumpian" and, below, the photo of Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wearing the "Make America great again" hat. Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Democratic Party, published it and Forza Italia responded within a few hours.

For spokesperson Raffaele Nevi, this is the "lowest level" reached by the political debate in the history of the Republic. The party asks Bonaccini to apologize and remove the content, and asks all political forces for solidarity for a minister who, Nevi recalls, after the threats received lives under a protection regime that "heavily limits" his freedom.

Maurizio Gasparri, president of the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defense Commission, says that the image is "the result of artificial intelligence". According to Senator Tajani, he never wore that hat, which was distributed as a gadget, and left it to whoever had offered it to him. Gasparri then turns to the secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein: he asks her to censor the behavior of the party president and to undertake not to use fakes created with AI.

The government also intervenes with the undersecretary for Publishing Alberto Barachini. For him, the use of artificial intelligence to denigrate representatives of institutions is "serious", even more so in a phase marked by hacker attacks and hybrid threats. Barachini recalls that he has already asked political forces not to use digitally modified voices and faces in the election campaign, and invites Agcom to evaluate rules on this in the guidelines for the next vote.

The cap had already been at the center of a clash in March. In a hearing before the Foreign Affairs and Defense commissions, Giuseppe Conte had criticized Tajani for the Maga hat he was holding at the first meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington. The minister replied that it was a gift.