Exaggerations, social media fights, and constant alarmism make his tenure deeply problematic.

Guido Crosetto, Italy’s minister of defense, has a problem. It’s called X, formerly Twitter. Go look at his replies and you may find a flood of insults aimed at anonymous accounts: “moron,” “idiot,” “ignorant,” “loser,” “shitty hater,” just to name a few.

Usually, he deletes them after a while, probably once he realizes that social media is not a free-for-all environment. Even so, this has been a recurring pattern since he started using the platform.

And that is not the only issue. In October 2025, his account began posting crypto scams asking for donations for Giorgio Armani’s funeral and for children in Gaza. The account had been breached. Think about that for a second: the defense minister of a NATO country most likely had some form of malware on his smartphone.

Then people wonder why he ended up stranded in Dubai during the Israel-US attack on Iran. How are international partners supposed to trust someone with sensitive information under those conditions?

But that is still not all. More recently, he started posting things like “I’m forced to know things that keep me from sleeping,” in relation to the US-announced attack on Iran on April 7, 2026. His tone has now become fully pessimistic and catastrophic, and he seems to suggest that he alone cannot guarantee Italy’s defense. It is a very disturbing rhetoric.

Because this is the real point: Crosetto does not merely communicate badly. He has built an entire style of public presence around exaggeration, alarm, and constant rhetorical escalation. He speaks as if every crisis were apocalyptic, as if every development were one step away from nuclear war, as if the world were permanently “on the edge of the abyss.” Then, when criticism arrives, he softens, redefines, clarifies, complains of misunderstanding, or retreats into ambiguity.

That pattern is dangerous enough on social media. It becomes far worse when combined with his institutional role. On one hand, he invokes secrecy and the gravity of state affairs. On the other, he talks too freely, too emotionally, and too theatrically. At times, he has seemed eager to disclose sensitive information to defend himself politically, including details that a defense minister would normally treat with much greater caution. That contradiction is the heart of the problem: too loose when restraint is needed, too dramatic when calm is required, too polemical when authority should be silent and precise.

A defense minister should reassure without lying, warn without performing, and speak with the measured seriousness required by the office. Crosetto does something else. He amplifies fear, picks petty fights, indulges in public self-dramatization, and then expects to be treated as a custodian of strategic credibility.

That is not strength. It is not frankness. It is not realism. It is a liability.