Extremely harsh back and forth between the Action leader Carlo Calenda and the host of Piazzapulita, La7, Corrado Formigli. The subject of the social controversy are the respective reconstructions of the senator’s participation in the broadcast and an alleged phone call revealed by Calenda received by the authors of the broadcast in which he asked his staff: “But can you guarantee that you will attack Meloni on the budget law?”.
Hence Formigli’s reply: “The senator claims that ‘my authors’ told him before an episode ‘he must assure us that he will attack Meloni’ and that participation in the part of the episode on the economic maneuver was skipped because he would not have been willing to attack the Prime Minister. This statement – states Formigli – is false and defamatory. The authors of a programme, when they hear a guest before the episode, ask him or, as in the case of Calenda, his spokesperson, what position he has on the issues to be debated in order to compose a balanced and dialectical parterre. In this case – explains Formigli – since Italo Bocchino, a supporter of the maneuver, was invited, the authors ascertained what Calenda’s opinion was on the matter in order to avoid too overlapping positions”.
As for the lack of participation, “Senator Calenda knows very well that he was moved to Sachs due to Maggioni’s forfeit, yet he publicly claims that the reason is his not sufficiently anti-Melonian positions on the maneuver”.
“Lying for a politician and former minister is a serious matter, elsewhere one resigns. And with this I believe that everything is about Senator Calenda. Next time, if he agrees to renounce immunity, I’ll see you in court”, concludes the host in a long post on social media.
Calenda’s reply is ready: “In a desperate attempt to throw the ball into a corner, Corrado talks about something else. I confirm what I said word for word. I willingly renounce my parliamentary immunity and I’ll see you in court.”
“This way of making a show in which politicians are invited on condition that they play a part is an unbearable vice of Italian information, like that of inviting Putin’s propagandists while also demanding that they be left to lie undisturbed. See the Sachs case. I’m sorry but it’s a mixture of bias and bad information that is bad for Italian democracy”, added Calenda in his post.
