Italian Prime Minister Splits With Longtime Partner After Lewd Sex Remarks Caught on Hot Mic

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on Friday that she was spitting up with her her longtime partner, TV journalist Andrea Giambruno, after nearly 10 years together. News of the couple's split follows a hot mic controversy in which Giambruno could be heard making lewd remarks on hot mic and propositioning female colleagues for sex.

According to the BBC, Giambruno's off-camera remarks came to light when they were broadcast by the Italian satirical TV program, Striscia La Notizia.

In once instance, the 42-year-old appeared to flirt with a female colleague, telling her, "You're so clever. Why didn't I meet you sooner?" In other audio snippets, Giambruno could be heard asking another colleague whether she was single or in an open relationship. At one point, he also bragged about having an affair, claiming that "everyone" at Mediaset, the television media company he works for, knew about it.

In the latter instance, Giambruno was said to have made references to threesomes and group sex, asking the colleague: "Will you join our group, our working group?"

Suffice to say, it didn't take long for Meloni to end the relationship. The first woman to have served as prime minister in Italy, the 46-year-old describes herself as a Christian and a conservative who claims to defend "God, fatherland, and family." She is opposed to same-sex marriage and parenting, and believes that nuclear families should exclusively be headed by male-female pairs.

"My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost ten years, ends here," Meloni shared in an Instagram post. "I thank him for the wonderful years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through, and for giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Geneva."

"Our roads have long been divided, and it’s time to realize it," she continued. "I will defend who we were, I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old who loves her mother and father, the way I could not love mine. Nothing more to say about this one."

Before this latest controversy, Giambruno found himself in hot water a few months back when he was accused of victim-blaming by insinuating that young women could avoid being raped by not getting drunk.

"If you go dancing you have every right to get drunk," he said at the time. "But if you avoid getting drunk and losing consciousness, maybe you would also avoid getting into specific problems because that's when you find the wolf."

Meloni responded by claiming that Giambruno's words had been misinterpreted, and asked reporters not to "hold her accountable for what a journalist says while doing his job."