a gamba tesa

Italian

Etymology

Literally, “at leg held out”.

Prepositional phrase

a gamba tesa

1. (soccer) of a foul maneuver in which one player attempts to trip another
2. (chiefly politics) in a way that is decisive and borders on incorrectness or immorality
   • 2020, Barack Obama, chapter 26, in Chicca Galli, Paolo Lucca, Giuseppe Maugeri, transl., Una terra promessa [A Promised Land], Garzanti Libri:

     ... più tardi, e in modo più sinistro, per il suo intervento a gamba tesa nel caso dei «cinque di Central Park», quando... Trump aveva acquistato un'intera pagina su quattro importanti quotidiani per chiedere il ripristino della pena di morte.

     ... later and more ominously as someone who'd thrust himself into the Central Park Five case, when... he'd taken out full-page ads in four major newspapers demanding the return of the death penalty.

     (literally, “... later, and in a more sinister way, for his morally dubious intervention in the case of the "Central Park Five," when... Trump had acquired an entire page on four important daily newspapers to ask for the restoration of the death penalty.”)