Elon Musk offered effusive praise for Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in brief remarks at an awards ceremony in New York, the latest sign of coziness between a billionaire who’s trying to get Donald Trump elected and a European leader with roots in the hard right but who has fully embraced Atlanticism.

After Musk spoke, Meloni delivered an implicit rebuke to the left, lamenting the desire to “violently erase the symbols of our civilizations in the US as in Europe.” “I know that we should not be ashamed to use and defend words and concepts like nation and patriotism, words that mean more than a physical place,” Meloni said. “They mean a state of mind to which one belongs.”