Andrea Giambruno, a journalist, has been criticized in recent weeks for his sexist comments.
New Delhi:
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has announced that she is divorcing partner Andrea Giambruno after a ten-year relationship. Giambruno, a television journalist, has been criticized in recent weeks for his sexist comments.
Giambruno is the presenter of a news program broadcast by Mediaset. Video clips from one of his recent off-air shows show him using profanity, touching his crotch and appearing to make advances toward a female colleague. “Why didn’t I meet you before?” he asks her.
In another recording, he can be heard telling female colleagues that they can work for him if they participate in group sex.
“Do you know that (name redacted) and am I having an affair? The whole of Mediaset knows it and now you too,” he says to the woman, who is also off camera.
“But we are looking for a third person, because we do threesomes. Celebrations too. Would you like to be part of our working group?” he adds.
Last month, Meloni told reporters that she should not be judged based on Giambruno’s comments and that she would not answer questions about his behavior in the future.
Meloni and Giambruno met in a TV studio in 2014 and have a seven-year-old daughter.
The split comes as the 46-year-old prime minister marks her first year in office at the head of a right-wing coalition government that has championed the traditional family as one of its policy hallmarks.
“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost ten years, ends here,” Meloni wrote on her social media accounts.
“We have parted ways for some time now, and the time has come to acknowledge this,” she added.
She also thanked Giambruno for “the wonderful years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through, and for giving me the most important thing in my life, our daughter Ginevra.”