ROME - - Andrea Giambruno, the climate change denying 'first gentleman,' Mediaset journalist and presenter of 'Diario del giorno', told the German minister for health, Karl Lauterbach, to “Stay at home in the Black Forest” after he complained about the extreme Italian temperatures, according to Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. 

 Giambruno retorted to the German minister: “You don't like the heat in Italy? Stay at home in the Black Forest.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's companion aimed his words at Lauterbach, who on July 13 last year dwelt on heat and climate change. 

 Lauterbach had expressed his concern with the extreme weather during a holiday he took in Italy earlier this month: “Arrived in Bologna, now off to Tuscany. The heatwave here is spectacular. If things continue like this, these holiday destinations will have no long-term future. Climate change is destroying southern Europe. An era is coming to an end.” 

 “New” because the journalist, during the heatwave that swept through Italy, well over forty degrees celsius, had explained to viewers of Rete 4 that heat “is not that big a deal.” Consequently, the first gentleman's reputation as a climate change denier has only been burnished. 

 Lauterbach’s words did not please Giambruno: “For 20-30 years, somehow the Germans have to explain to us how we live. And if you don't like it, you stay at home, eh,” he remarked impatiently live on Rete 4. 

 First he folded his arms, then he spread them wide, walked over, leaned on the lectern and looked annoyed: “Merkel is here, she's always here, if you don't like it, you stay at home. Stay in the Black Forest, you're fine, aren't you?"

 This is not Giambruno's first outburst that has caused controversy. During the heatwave, the partner of the leader of Fratelli d'Italia, launched himself into a show, defined as a climate denier, with Libero editor Vittorio Feltri.

 In recent days, Giambruno had made it official in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that from September 'Diario del giorno', edited by Tg4, will be broadcast from Rome and no longer from Milan: “It is a personal favour that the company is doing me. It is a reward not only for me, but for the whole team for having increased and consolidated the audience's ratings and for having won the loyalty of the public", also thanks to a less intense summer schedule. 

 Over the past few months there had been talk of a prime-time talk show for him, a hypothesis that Meloni's companion had denied: “It is a hypothesis that has never been discussed. They are rumours put about, perhaps out of envy, perhaps to tarnish me. But if I had to care about rumours and envy, I would never leave the house again,” the journalist had pointed out.

 Since September 25 2022, the day of the political elections, the 'first gentleman' has no longer appeared on air presenting 'Studio Aperto' and 'Tgcom24'.