Donald Trump Jr. took the GOP campaign message to the Balkan region, vowing that his father would end Russia’s war in Ukraine — and that a second Trump presidency would be a “great benefit” to eastern Europe.
The unannounced tour to Serbia and Romania comes six weeks before the Nov. 5 election, with Trump Jr. bringing the bruising campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris to southeast Europe. His son denounced her as a “radical leftist” who is “not the candidate of change.”
Speaking to several dozen business leaders in Belgrade earlier this week, the former president’s eldest son sought support among US voters with Serbian roots during a visit to the region.
“There’s a strong Serbian population in the United States — I’m told they’re largely conservative,” Trump Jr. told the gathering in an upscale hotel in central Belgrade on Monday, according to a video of his speech at the event published by N1 regional broadcaster. “Call your Serbian friends, mobilize the community” to vote for Trump, he said.
The Balkans are no stranger to Trump’s cohort. The former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner wants to invest in luxury hotels in Serbia and Albania, while his former special envoy to the region Richard Grenell continues to engage with its governments. Grenell is tipped as a potential secretary of state in a second Trump administration.
That outcome would “create incredible opportunities for the rest of the world” and be “a great benefit for eastern Europe,” Donald Jr. told a crowd of a few dozen business leaders in the Serbian capital late Monday.
Serbia aspires to join the European Union, but needs to mend ties with Kosovo, a former province whose ethnic Albanian majority declared independence in 2008. In 2020, Trump almost mediated a solution, but his son blamed then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel for undermining the effort. EU diplomats back then resisted Trump’s attempt at a settlement.
On Tuesday, he told a similar event in neighboring Romania that “the east can capture investors’ interest, because Western Europe can no longer offer what it used to,” conservative local broadcaster Romania TV reported.
Trump Jr. also offered assurances that his father would seek an end to the war in Ukraine, Romania’s eastern neighbor. He blamed vested financial interest for the continuing conflict.
“We have American politicians that will fund this thing indefinitely,” he said in Belgrade. “The military industrial complex wants to go to war forever” and “a lot of that money’s going back to the war effort in American companies.”
“I’m not being an apologist for Putin. He’s a dictator and he is a despot. But the United States did give him literally every excuse he possibly needed” to attack Ukraine, he said. “There was a boundary zone. It was called Ukraine. We’re not gonna move NATO there.”
Still, the real enemy is China, he told Serbs, even as President Aleksandar Vucic seeks ever closer ties to Beijing and billions in Chinese investment. “They’re the greatest geopolitical threat to freedom,” said Trump Jr.