Trump much more popular in Serbia than any other US leader, Vucic tells Breitbart News

BELGRADE - US President Donald Trump is by far the most popular US political leader in Serbia in a very long time, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has told Breitbart News in an interview.

Trump’s popularity in Serbia in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential elections reached astronomical proportions, with three quarters of Serbs liking Trump and wanting him to win, Vucic told the web portal before last week's trip to Beijing.

In Serbia, Trump had "by far the biggest support" of anywhere in Europe and not even deep-red states like West Virginia, Kentucky or Louisiana could hold a candle to Trump’s favorability in Serbia, he noted.

"What I can say is I was surprised with some comments that were made in the press in the United States where some other European countries in the past were emphasised as strongholds of Donald Trump because it was very obvious for all of us that in Serbia he had by far the biggest support, speaking about the election campaign, and that support exceeded even at that time 75 percent of those that are determined of course — which was not the case, even in the United States. Nowhere else," Vucic was quoted as saying.

"I’ll tell you what were the reasons. There are three important reasons for that. Number one is that people in Serbia wanted to see a new type of relationship between United States and our small country because in the last 30 years the United States were seen as someone who was either pushing and pressing us on many different issues from time to time, blackmailing us during Clinton’s era in particular, and at that time bombing us and everything else, and people were waiting for big changes," he said.

"They (Serbs) always liked United States, they always liked America, they liked that beautiful story of the American dream, and they wanted to see a sort of new kind of relationship between our two countries. Number two, they saw that President Trump was courageous enough to raise some issues, and to speak loudly, openly, and publicly about some issues, traditionally from a conservative point of view, in a different way than all the others in Brussels and Washington before were speaking about. When I say this, I’m speaking about family values, speaking about those transgender — whatever you call it — persons. I have nothing against anyone, but if you say to people in Serbia, ‘okay, now you don’t have only male and female, but there is something in between,’ people are confused and people wanted to hear clear and very simple messages that were made by President Trump. And also don’t forget number three, it’s about Christianity and taking care of values that belong to the world of Christians, and that’s what also people here liked very much. There is something else people saw, which is that President Trump wanted to create a peace between Ukraine and Russia, that he wanted to see peace in different parts of the world, and that’s what people appreciated.

These were the main reasons, of course, and another one is they saw a possibility of building up economic ties between us and the United States of America, having in mind the fact that President Trump is a very pragmatic, very rational person, that he always insists on economy, on volume up, on improving trade turnover — which were all great news for Serbian people, and then I wanted to say, even today, after a year or more than a year, Donald Trump is much more popular than any of let me say the possible opponents in the future to his team, to the MAGA team, because people here believe that Trump is the best choice for them," he said.

Vucic said that, given their history and the current geopolitical issues facing the nation, Serbs were huge fans of how President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been working to pressure Europe on a number of fronts.

He said he hoped European leaders realised that Trump’s way of doing things was here to stay, and that they would abandon their "nostalgic feelings" for the days of former President Barack Obama — someone who is never coming back to the White House.

"And I believe that there were some Europeans, from time to time, they believed in a long lasting alliance with the United States, even during Biden and Obama’s era, even when they were signalled by even those guys that something was wrong, although they were not courageous enough to say it openly, to say it publicly, and to defend America’s interests in that way as strongly as President Trump was doing but they think there is a point of return and everything will be okay when Trump loses midterm elections or once Rubio or whoever wins the next presidential elections. No, it’s not going to happen.

It’s not going to happen, they just don’t understand that the interests are different, and the situation is different. I just hope that some people will forget about nostalgic feelings and will take care of them in a rational and pragmatic way," Vucic said.

He said the last US president to formally visit Belgrade had been Richard Nixon (technically Jimmy Carter did in 1980 but it was because his mother was attending the late former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito’s funeral) and that he hoped Trump would follow Nixon’s visit with a state visit to Serbia.

Vucic said that, if Trump came to Serbia, he would be greeted by the biggest crowd he had ever seen — more than 100,000 people.

Asked if he wanted Trump to come to Belgrade, he responded:

"I do — I do invite him. He was visiting Poland, Hungary; he was coming to several countries in Europe, from Germany to some other countries, Great Britain of course, France, but I would like to invite him to Belgrade, to Serbia."

"I guarantee — to President Trump that he’s going to see the biggest crowd, even bigger than in Washington, when people are coming from all over the states to cheer and to chant songs and everything else to greet him after he won elections. It would be at least 100,000 people that will come to listen to him, that will come to see him in order to get some news about a better relationship with the United States," Vucic said.

"We have had not the very best relationship with the United States for many years. Before that, we were allies in both wars, the First World War and Second World War. We were saving American pilots during the Second World War. Here in this country we were allies, we lost a third of our population in the First World War. Serbs were the only nation of former Yugoslavia that was anti-Nazi oriented from the very first moment, and Belgrade was the only capital out of all former Yugoslavia’s capitals that was bombed and destroyed by Germans. That would be a beautiful visit, and a real revival of a strong and traditional friendship between United States and Serbia, and I can say to you that not only that, I’m certain that President Trump will be jubilant about that visit, and I guarantee that I’m too serious and I’m too responsible to say something that is not going to happen. If he comes, he’ll see something that he didn’t see anywhere else in the world — and this is Europe — and at the same time I believe that preparing that visit with the real substance, economic cooperation, investments, everything else, all the other fields that we are ready to cooperate with, that it would be beneficial for both big United States and small Serbia, but it would be very good for the States as well," he concluded.