Protests against Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic have intensified recently, and this month, an unexpected visitor arrived in the capital to talk with the beleaguered European leader: Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of former President Trump.
Mr. Trump’s brief visit, which included discussions with Mr. Vucic regarding U.S. foreign aid to Serbia, coincided with the Trump family and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, advancing plans for a Trump International Hotel in Belgrade—the first of its kind in Europe.
This hotel is planned to be constructed on the site of the former Yugoslavian Ministry of Defense headquarters, which was bombed by NATO 26 years ago and is now owned by the Serbian government. Opposition figures in Serbia have denounced the agreement and have called for its cancellation, raising concerns that the deal could be jeopardized by a shift in power.
During his visit, Mr. Trump voiced support for Mr. Vucic—a trip highlighting the intertwining of U.S. foreign policy and the financial interests of the Trump family during President Trump’s second term.
On Wednesday, Serbia’s prime minister resigned, effectively collapsing the ruling party and compelling Mr. Vucic to either form a new government or call for new parliamentary elections this year, which further complicates the political landscape.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr. refuted any notion that his visit posed a conflict of interest, asserting that the trip was primarily intended for an interview with Mr. Vucic for Mr. Trump’s podcast, and not meant to engage in matters related to foreign relations or the real estate project.
“Don hosts one of the largest political podcasts globally and was in Serbia purely in his role as a podcast host for an interview,” stated Andy Surabian, the spokesperson. “He was in and out of the country in under eight hours and did not discuss anything related to Trump Org.”
According to two individuals familiar with the trip, the visit was organized by Brad Parscale, a former campaign manager for President Trump.
Mr. Parscale is connected to a conservative podcast and radio broadcasting firm and has also founded a political consulting business. He had proposed advising Mr. Vucic during his 2022 re-election campaign but claimed he was not engaged.
Mr. Vucic now faces one of the most significant challenges of his nearly eight-year presidency. Protests erupted against his administration in November after a concrete structure collapsed atop a railway station walkway, resulting in 15 fatalities, an incident demonstrators attributed partly to government corruption.
The visit from Mr. Trump last week briefly shifted focus from these ongoing issues, quickly becoming national news in Serbia, with Mr. Vucic and his advisers interpreting it as an endorsement of his administration by the Trump administration, despite the rising protests in the capital.
“A cordial discussion with Donald Trump Jr., the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, focused on bilateral relations between Serbia and the USA and current global political and economic topics,” Mr. Vucic posted on social media following the meeting.
Serbia’s foreign affairs minister, Marko Djuric, mentioned in a television interview after Mr. Trump’s visit that the presence of President Trump’s son “provides great momentum for an excellent start to relations with the new administration.”
However, others in Serbia held a markedly different perspective.
“The son of President Trump is here to offer Vucic assistance,” remarked Dragan Jonic, a member of Serbia’s parliament from the opposition party. “It clearly represents a conflict of interest as Vucic struggles to maintain his position, and the Trumps are working to preserve their real estate agreement.”
Last May, Mr. Vucic’s government entered into an agreement with Affinity Global Development, a company founded by Mr. Kushner. This firm intends to invest $500 million to develop a 175-room Trump hotel along with 1,500 luxury apartments and other facilities at the former defense ministry site in Belgrade.
“We are excited to expand our presence into Europe,” Eric Trump, another son of President Trump, said in January when the addition of a Trump International Hotel to the project was first made public. Eric Trump is leading the family’s real estate company.
However, Donald Trump Jr. also serves as executive vice president at Trump Organization, which manages the family’s hotels, golf courses, and various assets, and is involved in planning the Serbian hotel initiative.
Two sources familiar with Donald Trump Jr.’s journey, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter, clarified that Mr. Trump was not compensated for this trip. However, his flight, along with that of his girlfriend, Bettina Anderson, was financed by Mr. Parscale, who has a business partner in Serbia. Mr. Parscale declined to comment or reveal the identity of his Serbian partner.
Virginia Canter, a former ethics adviser to the International Monetary Fund, suggested that Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Serbian president echoed the activities of Hunter Biden, who was accused by Republicans of using his father’s position as vice president to secure profitable overseas business transactions.
“It’s quite hypocritical for them to be concerned about Hunter Biden’s dealings abroad,” stated Ms. Canter, who has also served as an ethics lawyer during the Clinton administration and now works at a nonprofit named State Democracy Defenders Action, critical of Mr. Trump.
In Ms. Canter’s opinion, the conflict of interest surrounding Donald Trump Jr.’s circumstances is more transparent.
“Don Jr., as a proxy for his father, is leveraging the public office of the U.S. president to assist the president of Serbia in remaining in power—while also advancing the Trump family’s financial interests,” she argued. “This is unethical and offensive.”
It remains uncertain how beneficial Mr. Trump’s presence in Serbia was for Mr. Vucic.
A few days following the visit, central Belgrade was filled with over 100,000 demonstrators in what organizers termed one of the largest protests in the nation’s history.
Last year, Mr. Vucic’s government proposed a deal to the Trump family while President Trump was in the midst of his re-election campaign, to secure access to a prime real-estate development site located in downtown Belgrade.
According to Serbian officials, the government is leasing this site to Mr. Kushner’s real estate partnership for a duration of 99 years. Affinity Global Development, linked to Kushner, has in return pledged to build the hotel and luxury apartments in collaboration with Mohamed Alabbar, an executive from the United Arab Emirates.
Before being elected president, Donald J. Trump considered creating a hotel at this specific location in 2013, with Trump Organization associates visiting Belgrade to evaluate the site. The project did not materialize before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, but Mr. Kushner revived it last year while Mr. Trump was campaigning for re-election.
The hotel initiative had already sparked smaller protests in Belgrade even prior to the devastating rail station canopy collapse that occurred late last year.
Opposition leaders like Mr. Jonic argue that the former Ministry of Defense site holds symbolic significance as it was attacked by NATO forces led by the U.S. in 1999, during the period when Serbia and Montenegro were part of Yugoslavia. They assert that it should not be handed over to American property developers seeking profits.
“Can you envision any American president gifting West Point to an offshore company to demolish it and establish a hotel?” asked Aleksandar Jovanovic, a member of Serbia’s parliament, last year during the negotiations, referencing the U.S. Military Academy.
“It would take a vivid imagination to conceive of such an idea. Sadly, what is inconceivable in America is a heartbreaking reality in Serbia,” he remarked at that time.
During his visit, Donald Trump Jr. not only was shown around downtown Belgrade by the Serbian president, but also conducted an almost hour-long interview with Mr. Vucic that recently aired on Mr. Trump’s podcast, “Triggered.”
In this conversation, Mr. Trump drew parallels between the protests following the November rail station disaster and the criticism faced by supporters of his father during the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack in Washington.
“It was subsequently weaponized,” Mr. Trump stated during the podcast, while elaborating on theories related to events in Washington “like our, you know, January 6th turning into something it wasn’t, potentially inciting even a revolution.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Vucic also discussed Russia, the Ukraine conflict, and Mr. Vucic’s collaborations with President Trump during his inaugural term.
Each separately contended that funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has seen cuts under the Trump administration in recent months, was improperly utilized by certain nonprofit organizations in Serbia to contribute to the protests, though neither provided evidence to substantiate this claim.
Mr. Vucic explicitly expressed his gratitude for the Trump family’s apparent support, indicating that it is part of the reason President Trump enjoys substantial popularity in Serbia.
“In this country, Trump was enjoying the highest favorability of any leader in Europe by a significant margin,” Mr. Vucic noted. “I’m not flattering him or you. I’m expressing what people think here.”
Andrew Higgins contributed reporting.
