On Thursday, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto defended his close friend, premier and leader of his rightwing Fratelli D’Italia (FdI) party Giorgia Meloni, after an Italian freelance journalist called her a “fishwife”.

The exchange between Crosetto and journalist and writer Jeanne Perego, a correspondent for various Italian and foreign news outlets in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, took place on Twitter.

Perego on Wednesday called Meloni a “pescivendola”, or, “fishwife”, after she rather brusquely sought to cut short media questions after presenting Italy’s 2023 budget bill, muttering about prior unfair media treatment.

“The fishwife’s return, what an embarrassment,” Perego captioned a clip of the press conference.

Crosetto tweeted back on Thursday:

“You can and you must criticise institutions because anyone’s freedom to criticise is the salt of democracy. Buy why insult them in a heavy and vulgar way? Why do some people, in Italy, always have to go beyond the normal rules of respect between civilised people?”

Perego replied:

“Dear Crosetto, I think that those who have breached the bounds of normal rules of respect between civilized people are actually the people who represent the institutions. Would you have reacted like that (to the journalists’ questions)?”

The hashtag #fishwife went viral on Twitter following the exchange.