“The best of us all has gone,” Antonio Di Bella (among the veterans of the Italian correspondents from the United States) writes on social media to greet and remember his colleague Daniele Compatangelo, La7 correspondent from Washington and president of the foreign correspondents association. Compatangelo died at the age of 50 and was found lifeless in his home in Washington. According to initial investigations, no signs of violence were found on the journalist’s body and the man may have died due to illness.
Daniele Compatangelo was the president of the White House Foreign Correspondents’ Association (WHFCA), the association that brings together international journalists accredited with US government policy. He had experienced a moment of great and deserved popularity about a month ago, creating an international scoop: an exclusive telephone interview with Donald Trump during which the president of the United States commented on his last meeting with Giorgia Meloni at the G7, expressing heavy criticism of the head of the Italian government. Compatangelo, who had Trump’s personal cell phone number, had spoken with the president for only a few minutes. But Trump’s answers were particularly biting.
Trump had claimed that Giorgia Meloni had “begged him to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so badly. I would have even not taken it, but I felt sorry for her.” “How is your prime minister? How is he?”, Trump had asked the La7 correspondent, who in turn had asked the American president for a comment on the conversation he had with Meloni on the sidelines of the Evian summit. “She’s probably happy that I talked to her. I wasn’t obligated to talk to her,” he added.
Compatangelo’s interview had triggered a heated political and diplomatic debate. “Donald Trump’s statements are totally invented statements. I’m frankly appalled”, commented Meloni, “I’m sorry that he doesn’t have the same determination with the enemies of the West, with the enemies of the United States, with leaderships with which he instead proves much more accommodating. But one thing must be remembered: Italy and I never beg”.
“We are astonished. All of La7 clings to his loved ones. Daniele was a precious and rare collaborator, for his desire to always tell stories, with precision and joy. He was a good journalist. He will be missed”, declared the director of La7, Andrea Salerno, commenting on the correspondent’s death.
