Trump Jr. Backs Bosnian Separatist While Trashing Europe as "Disaster" in Private Business Trip

Donald Trump Jr. spent Tuesday in Banja Luka, a city in the Serb-run half of Bosnia, telling business leaders that "the biggest players" in finance and tech believe "Europe is a disaster" -- and then offering his own diagnosis of what ails the continent: too much liberalism, not enough "common sense."

The eldest Trump son's remarks, delivered in what the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo insisted was a "private capacity," came during a visit to Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity whose separatist leadership has long sought to break away from the rest of Bosnia and unite with neighboring Serbia. That separatist push was the central cause of the 1992-95 Bosnian War, which killed more than 100,000 people before a U.S.-brokered peace agreement ended the bloodshed.

Trump Jr. praised eastern European countries for maintaining a "work ethic that has withstood some of the 'woke' nonsense that has really been a parasitic thing in the mind in Western Europe," according to video provided by official Republika Srpska television. He predicted "major fractures" between eastern and western EU member states, framing the divide as one between "common sense" and political correctness.

The trip was a clear show of support for Milorad Dodik, the former Republika Srpska president and current Bosnian Serb political leader who has repeatedly called for his region to secede from Bosnia. Dodik, an ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin, celebrated Trump Jr.'s visit on social media as evidence of "an important shift of the U.S. administration under the leadership of President Trump."

That shift is already visible in policy. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Dodik in 2022 over his separatist agenda, which U.S. officials warned was stoking instability in the Balkans. The Trump administration lifted those sanctions last year.

Trump Jr.'s Banja Luka appearance coincided with Vice President JD Vance's trip to Hungary to campaign for Orban ahead of a contested election next weekend. The synchronized visits underscore the Trump administration's embrace of nationalist leaders in central and eastern Europe -- often at the expense of traditional U.S. alliances with western European democracies.

The Trump administration has escalated its criticism of the European Union in recent months, particularly over trade policy and EU regulation of American tech companies. That criticism has intensified during the Iran war, with Trump officials accusing European allies of insufficient support for U.S. military objectives.

Bosnia is a candidate country for EU membership. The 27-nation bloc is Bosnia's largest trading partner, biggest investor, and primary provider of financial aid. Trump Jr.'s comments dismissing Europe as a "disaster" that needs to "get out of their own way" came in a country actively seeking closer integration with the very institutions he was trashing.

The U.S. Embassy's insistence that Trump Jr. was traveling "in a private capacity" does little to obscure the political significance of the visit. The president's son showing up to praise a separatist politician whose sanctions his father lifted -- while attacking the EU in a candidate country for membership -- sends a clear signal about where the Trump administration's sympathies lie.

Dodik framed both Trump Jr.'s visit and Vance's Hungary trip as evidence of U.S. "care for this part of Europe regarding the position of Christians." That framing conveniently ignores the fact that Bosnia's Muslim-majority Bosniaks and Catholic Croats are also Christians' neighbors -- and that U.S. policy during the 1990s was aimed at preventing exactly the kind of ethnic partition Dodik continues to advocate.

Trump Jr. did not address questions about whether his "private" business discussions in Banja Luka involved any commercial interests tied to the Trump family's business empire, which has expanded aggressively into international real estate and financial ventures during his father's presidency.