Trump's 'chosen one' Giorgia Meloni heads to Washington to play delicate balancing act

Sitting alone at the end of a dinner party, under chandeliers, next to a table with white roses and leftover wine, Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump are locked in conversation. It is early December and they are pictured in an opulent dining room of the à‰lysée Palace, where the French president, Emmanuel Macron, hosted guests after the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. It was the first time Italy's far-right prime minister had met Trump, a rendezvous that followed years of her nurturing relations with his Make America Great Again (Maga) militants. For all we know, they could have been bonding…