The demonstrations against President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia had increased in intensity and in size when an unusual guest appeared in his capital this month to meet the besieged European chief: Donald Trump Jr., the oldest son of President Trump.
Trump’s quick visit, who included a meeting with Mr. Vucic to talk about American foreign help in Serbia, came while the Trump family and Jared Kushner, the American president’s son -in -law, advanced with plans to build an international Trump hotel in Belgrade, the first property of this type in Europe.
The hotel is expected to be built on the site of the former head office of the Yugoslav Deputy Ministry, which was bombed by NATO 26 years ago on land held by the Serbian government. Opposition leaders in Serbia criticized the agreement and called for termination, raising the prospect that the agreement could be scuttled in a change of power.
Trump used the visit as an opportunity to express his support for Mr. Vucic – a trip that may have offered the most explicit mixture so far in the second term in the American foreign policy of President Trump and the financial interests of the Trump family.
Wednesday, The Serbian Parliament has accepted the resignation of its Prime Minister, bringing the party to power and forcing Vucic to form a new government or to organize new parliamentary elections later this year, creating more uncertainty.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr. rejected any suggestion that his visit has created a conflict of interest. The spokesman said that the trip had been motivated by a plan aimed at interviewing Mr. Vucic for Mr. Trump’s podcast, so as not to enter into foreign relations or real estate agreement.
“Don welcomes one of the world’s largest political podcasts and was strictly in Serbia as Podcast host for an interview,” said Andy Surabian, the spokesperson. “He was in and outside the country in less than eight hours and had no discussion with anyone about Trump Org.”
The visit, according to two people informed of the plan, was organized by Brad Parscale, a former campaign director For President Trump.
Mr. Parscale, director of a conservative podcast and broadcasting company, also founded campaign consulting firm. He had presented Mr. Vucic’s index during his re -election campaign in 2022, but said that he had not been hired.
Vucic is now faced with one of the greatest tests of his almost eight years as president. Demonstrations against his administration broke out in November after the collapse of a concrete structure at the top of a gateway from the station which killed 15, an accident that the demonstrators partially blamed the corruption of the government.
Mr. Trump’s visit last week brought a brief break in these problems and immediately became a new national in Serbia, with Mr. Vucic and his best advisers who stressed it as a sign that Trump administration supports Mr. Vucic, despite increasing demonstrations in the streets of the capital.
“A cordial conversation with Donald Trump Jr., the son of the American president Donald Trump on bilateral relations between Serbia and the United States and the current subjects that shape the global political and economic scene”, ” Mr. Vucic wrote in a publication on social networks after the meeting.
Marko Djuric, Serbia Minister for Foreign Affairs, added in a television interview After Mr. Trump’s visit, the presence of President Trump’s son “gives a great momentum for an excellent start of relations with the new administration”.
Others in the country had a fairly different vision.
“The son of President Trump is there to try to lend a hand to Vucic,” said Dragan Jonic, member of the Party of the Parliament of Serbia. “This is obviously a conflict of interest, because Vucic tries to maintain power and the Trumps want to maintain their real estate agreement alive.”
Vucic’s government has signed a agreement Last May with Affinity Global Development, a company created by Mr. Kushner. The company plans to invest $ 500 million to build a Trump hotel with 175 rooms with 1,500 luxury apartments and other amenities on the former site of the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade.
“We are delighted to expand our presence in Europe,” said Eric Trump, another of President Trump’s sons in January, when the inclusion of an international Trump hotel in the project was first announced publicly. Eric Trump is the main family member who heads his real estate company.
But Donald Trump Jr. is also a Executive vice-president To Trump Organization, which operates family hotels, golf courses and other assets, and contributes to planning the Serbian hotel project.
Two people who had been informed of Donald Trump Jr.’s trip, but who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss it publicly, Trump had not been paid to make the trip. But her plane ticket, and that of her girlfriend, Bettina Anderson, was covered by Mr. Parscale, who has a trading partner based in Serbia. Mr. Parscale refused to comment or disclose the name of his Serbian trading partner.
Virginia Canter, former ethical advisor to the International Monetary Fund, said that Donald Trump’s meeting Jr. with the Serbian president recalled Hunter Biden’s activity, who was accused by the Republicans of taking advantage of his father’s position, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as vice-president to do lucrative affairs abroad.
“It is in a way the climax of hypocrisy that they were concerned about Hunter Biden’s foreign work,” said Ms. Canter, who was also a lawyer for the White House in Clinton and is now working in a non -profit group called action by defenders of state democracy, which was critical of Trump.
In the opinion of Ms. Canter, the conflict of interest in the case of Donald Trump Jr. is more explicit.
“Don Jr., as a substitute for his father, uses the president of the United States to help the president of Serbia to remain in office-while promoting the personal financial interest of the Trump family,” she said. “It is contrary to ethics. It’s offensive. “
We do not know how much Mr. Trump’s presence in Serbia may have helped Mr. Vucic.
Several days after the visit, the streets of the Belgrade center were blocked with more than 100,000 demonstrators for what the organizers called one of the biggest demonstrations in the country’s history.
Last year, Mr. Vucic’s government offered the Trump family, when President Trump was re -elected, to access the Senior Real estate development site in the middle of Belgrade.
The government rents the site to the real estate partnership of Mr. Kushner for 99 years, according to Serbian officials. Affinity Global Development, the affiliate of Kushner, has in return agreed to build the hotel and luxury apartments in partnership with Mohamed Alabbar, a business manager of the United Arab Emirates.
Donald J. Trump, before being elected president for the first time and when he still managed the family real estate business, had first planned to build a hotel Exact site in 2013 and associates of the Trump organization Traveling in Belgrade has inspect THE location. The project did not meet before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, but Mr. Kushner rekindled it last year while Mr. Trump presented himself to his functions.
The hotel project had generated smaller protests in Belgrade even before the canopy of the deadly railway station collapsed at the end of last year.
Opposition leaders like Mr. Jonic argued that the former site of the Ministry of Defense was symbolic because he was attacked by NATO forces led by the United States in 1999 when Serbia and his neighbor from Montenegro were part of Yugoslavia. It should not be given to American real estate developers who are looking for a profit, the heads of the opposition said.
“Can you imagine an American president, any president, offering West Point as a gift to an offshore company, only to demolish it and build a hotel?” Aleksandar Jovanovic, a member of the Parliament of Serbia, said last year when the agreement was being negotiated, referring to the American military academy.
“We would have to have a lively imagination to imagine this. Unfortunately, what is unthinkable in America is a tragic reality in Serbia,” he said at the time.
Donald Trump Jr., in addition to being shown the disposition of downtown Belgrade by the president of Serbia, carried out an interview of almost an hour with Mr. Vucic who was broadcast in recent days On Mr. Trump’s podcast, “triggered”.
During the conversation, Trump compared the demonstrations in response to the collapse of the November railway station to the criticism of January 6, 2021, to his father’s supporters on the Capitol in Washington.
“He was then armed,” Trump said in the interview, before continuing the theories raised by Trump allies linked to events in Washington “like ours, you know, on January 6, turned into something that was not, to potentially encourage a revolution.”
Trump and Mr. Vucic also talked about Russia and the war in Ukraine and Mr. Vucic’s work with President Trump during his first mandate.
They both said separately that the funding of the American agency for international development, that the Trump administration has reduced in the past two months, had been poorly used by certain non -profit groups in Serbia to play a role in the demonstrations, although none of the two has offered proof of this allegation.
The obvious support of the Trump family of Mr. Vucic is highly appreciated, the Serbian president clearly said, adding that he was thinking that it is part of the reason why President Trump is so popular in Serbia.
“It was the country where Trump enjoyed the greatest popularity of all of Europe,” said Vucic. “I don’t flatter it or I don’t flatter you. I say what people here think. ”
Andrew Higgins Contributed reports.