Secretary of State Marco Rubio described himself as “a strong supporter of NATO” amid tensions between President Trump and the members of the alliance.

“I’ve been a strong supporter of NATO throughout my career in the Senate and even now,” Rubio told reporters in Italy after he met with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday.

But, the secretary added, the point of being in NATO is for allies to help “in case of contingencies,” which did not happen when the US attacked Iran.

“We had a contingency. And some countries in Europe – some countries in Europe like Spain, as an example – denied us the use of those bases for a very important contingency, that in some ways the denial of those bases actually impeded the mission,” he said.

Trump has described the bloc as a “paper tiger” and threatened to withdraw US troops from Italy and Spain. Rubio said he had no announcements to make about American forces, noting it was the president’s decision.

And he wouldn’t guarantee the president’s attacks would stop.

“The president will always speak clearly about how he feels about the US and US policy,” Rubio said. “The president of the United States is always going to act on what’s in the best interest of the United States.”

Still, the secretary of state tried to charm Meloni and Pope Leo XIV after Trump called them weak for not supporting his war efforts.

He came bearing gifts, including a crystal football engraved with the State Department’s logo for the pope.

Meloni had her own gift for Rubio, a family tree showing proof of his Italian ancestry. The document charted his family’s origins to the northern Piemonte region.

Rubio, whose parents are Cuban immigrants, was delighted with the present and said the new information was a good reason to make a return trip to Italy. The secretary of state, who speaks Spanish, vowed to learn Italian too.

“I need to learn a third language,” he said, noting Italian would be easy given his Spanish knowledge.

For her part, Meloni was more circumspect about the sitdown, describing their meeting as a “frank dialogue, between allies who defend their own national interests but who both know how precious Western unity is.”

Meloni’s close relationship with Trump is hurting her in her own country, where most Italians oppose the war in Iran. She has had to walk a careful line and has been clear that “we are not at war, and we do not want to go to war.”