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Conservative leaders and politicians from around the world have descended on Washington DC as foreign heads of state will attend a US presidential inauguration for the first time in history.
The arrival of four sitting leaders and scores of other conservative politicians from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa highlights how personal relationships with Donald Trump are seen as a precious currency, as the new president is expected to return US foreign policy to an era of feuding and schmoozing.
Among those attending are the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Argentina’s Javier Milei, and conservative and far-right politicians from the UK, Germany, France and other countries around the world.
The UK’s former prime minister Liz Truss, ex-home secretary Suella Braverman, and former defense secretary Liam Fox were also in Washington for the inauguration, as were three officials from Germany’s far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party.
“The new [Trump] term can’t come soon enough,” wrote Truss in a post on X with a photo outside of DC’s Mayflower Hotel. “The West needs it.”
Meloni is positioning herself as a bridge between the incoming Trump administration and the European Union. Trump did not invite top EU leaders including the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen; the European council president, António Costa; and the top diplomat Kaja Kallas.
Meloni and Trump dined at his Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this month and the president-elect praised Meloni, saying that she had “really taken Europe by storm”.
“It is very important for a nation like Italy to have solid relations with the United States, to bear witness to the will to continue and strengthen that relationship at a time when challenges are global and interconnected,” she said in remarks ahead of the inauguration.
Argetina’s far-right leader Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, has been a darling of the American right. His “chainsaw” campaign of fiscal balance and deregulation has served as the inspiration for Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency”, championing cuts to government wages and departments focusing on equality.
Trump has called Milei his “favourite president”, and at an event ahead of the inauguration, the Doge co-head Vivek Ramaswamy praised Milei as “a man who knows how to Doge and how to Maga”, the acronym meaning Make America Great Again.
Milei is said to be keen to use his relationship with Trump in order to negotiate new loans from the International Monetary Fund. But he, like other leaders, is warily eyeing Trump’s promises to install tough new tariffs on foreign imports.
Other conservative leaders from Latin America planning to attend include El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, the country’s crypto-friendly president whose “iron fist” crackdown on crime has led to the detention of 2% of the country’s adult population, and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, the heir to a banana fortune who has vowed to clamp down on organised crime and bring jobs back to the country.
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the conservative former president, had attempted to travel to Washington for the event but was denied his request to have his passport returned by Brazil’s supreme court.
Bolsonaro shared a photo on social media of his representatives at Trump’s inauguration: his wife, Michelle, and his son, the congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro.
The former president reportedly sobbed at the airport as he bid farewell to his wife. “Of course, it would have been wonderful for me to go. President Trump really wanted it, so much so that he invited me. I’m upset, still shaken,” Bolsonaro told reporters.
In contrast to Italy, Germany’s centre-left-led government has been largely frozen out of the festivities, with only Berlin’s ambassador to Washington, Andreas Michaelis, among the official guests. Jürgen Hardt, the foreign affairs spokesman for the parliamentary group of the conservative opposition Christian Democrats, who are the frontrunners ahead of next month’s general election, also accepted an invitation.
That contrasts with several invitations sent to members of the far-right Alternative for Germany. Although the party’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, bowed out of attendance citing campaign commitments, at least three AfD officials are attending including co-leader Tino Chrupalla.
Several notable figures opposed to Russia’s Vladimir Putin are also in Washington. A spokesman for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian opposition figure, attended at a Trump rally ahead of the inauguration. “He came by invitation of his American friends close to the new administration,” a spokesman told the Guardian.
Salome Zourabichvili, the former president of Georgia, was also said to be attending.
Both have been among the leading foreign critics of Putin, with whom Trump has forged an unusually cordial relationship and is expected to seek to meet early in his term in order to discuss a potential settlement to the war in Ukraine.
