Exclusive — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic: Donald Trump ‘Much More Popular’ in Serbia than Any Other U.S. Leader Because He Is ‘Pragmatic,’ ‘Rational’

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told Breitbart News exclusively in his office here that American President Donald Trump is easily the most popular United States political leader in his country in a very long time.

Vucic said that Trump’s popularity in Serbia in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election reached astronomical proportions, with three quarters of Serbs liking Trump and wanting him to win. Vucic said that, 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 here.

“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 emphasized 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,” Vucic said. “Nowhere else.”

Vucic is the president of Serbia, a Balkan country in Eastern Europe that has frankly been through a lot over the last century plus. Serbia was part of Yugoslavia, which was divided during the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and before that was behind the Iron Curtain of Communism in the Soviet Union. But before Communism swept eastern Europe, Serbians sided with the Allies in World War II against the Nazis — and the nation lost a third of its population in both World War I and again in World War II. Later, the United States led a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, during Bill Clinton’s administration — the Clintons are not popular here at all — and now Serbia is trying to join the European Union but facing some headwinds from Brussels as the as-of-yet unresolved Kosovo issue still looms large over Serbia’s future. Nonetheless, Belgrade’s thriving vibrance swirls together this rough history with a modern crossroads where west meets east and north meets south and Vucic, the nation’s president for the past several years, aims to strategically position Serbia for a bright 21st century. Vucic, an avid chess player, sat with Breitbart News last weekend for a nearly hourlong interview before he visited Beijing, China, one of the first world leaders to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping after Trump’s historic state visit to China in May. Vucic told Breitbart News there are several reasons why Trump is revered in Serbia.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic talks with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on May 23, 2026, in Belgrade, Serbia. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)

“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,” Vucic said. “They 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.”

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media prior to a Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House on May 8, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Vucic said Serbs are, given their history and the current geopolitical issues facing the nation, huge fans of how President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been working to pressure Europe on a number of fronts. Vucic was sitting in the front row, for instance, when Rubio gave his address to the Munich Security Conference earlier this year — a year after Vance was criticized by European leaders for a similar speech. Vucic said Rubio’s much warmer embrace by these same European leaders was because they were only listening to what they wanted to hear, and they must have missed that the Trump White House’s message to Europe actually sharpened and got tougher from Vance’s address a year ago to Rubio’s this year. Vucic said he hopes that European leaders realize that Trump’s way of doing things is here to stay, and that they abandon their “nostalgic feelings” for the days of former President Barack Obama — someone who is never coming back to the White House.

“You know, what was my comment after that Rubio session?” Vucic said. “Because he got a big applause. You know what I was saying to my advisers, because I go everywhere to listen to the people? I like to listen to the people. I hate long interviews. I need to be very much focused, and it’s much easier to learn something from someone than to just speak endlessly, but anyway, I was saying to my people, ‘I don’t know why these people were so satisfied with the speech because they did not understand his main messages.’ If they were listening carefully to his speech, because okay Rubio wrapped that nicely, speaking about a long-lasting alliance and absolutely everything, but at the end his messages were even tougher than JD Vance’s messages. They were not focused on substance. They were listening to what they wanted to hear not what was really said actually. 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 signaled 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 the last U.S. president to formally visit Belgrade was 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 hopes Trump will follow Nixon’s visit with a state visit to Serbia. He said if Trump comes to Serbia he will be greeted by the biggest crowd he has ever seen — more than 100,000 people.

“I do — I do invite him,” Vucic said when asked if he wants Trump to come to Belgrade. “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, and I guarantee him one thing. You can say whatever you want to me, even during this interview, I’ll decently always respond to you, but there would be only one insult, only one offense that you can do, which is to say that we were not hospitable enough here and I guarantee — I guarantee, I guarantee, 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. 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.”

At the end of the interview with Breitbart News, Vucic challenged this journalist to a game of chess in his office. Vucic, as mentioned before, is a prolific chess player — and he won the game within five minutes. Asked what people can learn from chess, he said “absolutely everything.”

Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle (L) plays chess with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on May 23, 2026, in Belgrade, Serbia. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)

“First of all, you learn how to lose, which is the first precondition in learning how to win — and learning how to lose means that you never underestimate your opponents and your adversaries,” Vucic said. “To the contrary, it’s better to overestimate someone than to underestimate someone. On the other hand, you learn that vivere res militare — that you have to fight for your ideas and your ideals. Number three, no surrender. You have to try to win. Even when you fall, you have to rise from the ashes and to try to win till the last vessel, till the last piece on a chessboard, as well.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on May 23, 2026, in Belgrade, Serbia. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)

Vucic opened the chess match with the King’s Gambit, a famously bold and aggressive chess opening, perhaps a metaphor for his leadership style.

Vucic is also a former basketball player — Serbs, who are notoriously tall, produce many great basketball players including Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic — and still even coaches some basketball to this day. When asked what people can learn from basketball, which is the ultimate team sport, he said that “it’s totally different” from chess.

“This is about cooperating, collaborating with the other people, this is a totally different story,” Vucic said. “There is an important and a beautiful proverb that goes like this: If you want to go fast, you go alone, but if you want to go far, go together with the others. That means you can get good statistical data if you play for yourself in basketball, but then at the end you will reach nothing if you don’t cooperate well with your teammates. This is the basis, and this is life as well.”

He’s a big fan of the NBA, and said he loves Jokic. Vucic also said he’s been following the NBA playoffs this year and mentioned he thought the games between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals were some of the best basketball he’s ever seen.

“I do follow the NBA every single night,” Vucic said. “I really love Nikola Jokic. I love his state of his mind. It is something that I really admire. But watching this Western Conference finals, which is Oklahoma versus Spurs, it’s the best basketball. Whether I loved Michael Jordan more than whether I preferred the Boston Celtics to all the others, even from time of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and all the others — even I was very much surprised with their defeat from Philadelphia 76ers, which was very surprising, but it doesn’t matter that [Jayson] Tatum couldn’t play, but it was a badly prepared game from my point of view — but anyway, this one was played by Oklahoma and the Spurs, the second and the third game. It’s amazing. It’s the best basketball I have ever seen in my life. It’s the best basketball.”

Much more from Vucic’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News, including his thoughts on his meeting with Xi and American investments in Serbia, is forthcoming.