Donald Trump Jr criticizes European Union during a trip to Bosnia

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, April 8, (AP): Donald Trump Jr lashed out at the European Union on Tuesday, saying its liberal policies were discouraging investment and predicted a "major fracture” between the bloc's eastern and western member states.

The eldest child of the US president said that "the biggest players, the biggest names in banking and finance, in tech and AI across the board” believe that "Europe is a disaster,” but "the disaster that they feel also needs to be fixed.”

"The only way it gets fixed, though, in my opinion is if they (Europe) get out of of their own way,” Trump Jr. said during a business discussion in the northwestern Bosnian town of Banja Luka, according to video recordings provided by the official television RTRS television.

Banja Luka is the main town in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run part of Bosnia, whose leaders are staunch admirers of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The press office of the US Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, told The Associated Press in an email that Trump Jr. came "in a private capacity.”

The visit was nonetheless seen here as a boost for the Serb separatist political leadership. Trump Jr.’s trip came as US Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to support the reelection bid of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before a highly-contested vote next weekend.

Bosnian Serb politician and former Republika Srpska president, Milorad Dodik, an ally of Orbán, said on X that the two visits "signal an important shift of the US administration under the leadership of President Trump.”

Trump Jr, in Banja Luka, said that eastern European countries "have a work ethic that has (withstood) some of the ‘woke’ nonsense that has really been a parasitic thing in the mind in Western Europe.” "I see that creating major fractures in the European Union between those few countries in eastern Europe that actually still believe in common sense, and Western Europe that’s clearly missing in the political discourse these days,” he said.