Special Report: The Trump hotel that could topple a government

**Lewis Goodall** (0:02)
This is a global production.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
This moment is about the history.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:06)
Hands off our land, our land is not for sale.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:09)
We are fed up, it's been like this for 35 years.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:13)
you, go out from here.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:15)
Revolution, my friend, it's a revolution.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:17)
In our national anthem, we have no mercy for traitors.

**Lewis Goodall** (0:23)
There has been so much speculation as to where the resistance would come from. Would it be the great American cities, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta? Would it be European cities who loathe what they perceive as Trump's imperialism against NATO in London or in Paris or Rome or Berlin? In fact, after two years of Donald Trump 2, it turns out that the most concerted, the most consistent, the most persistent resistance that we see is on the streets of little Tirana, of little Albania, now in its 76th day. How did it come to be that it would be this city, this country, which would turn out against not just Donald Trump but his family?
Welcome to The News Agents.

**Ditmir Boushati** (1:28)
The News Agents.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:33)
The protest started from the Trump Project in the Cezanne Island from one guy that got dragged across the mud, on his own land by the way. If that action was the lighting match, the gunpowder, the dry gunpowder was already on the ground.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:48)
The transportation is not good, the education is not good, so people are here to demand more transparency, more accountability from these government officials to say, hey, we don't like this and we want you to do better.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:02)
I'm here protesting against the project that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner want to make in Albania.

**SPEAKER_8** (2:08)
Why do you feel so passionate about it? Why is it so important?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:11)
Because it's been like this for 35 years. They have impoverished the Albania, so we are fed up. We want them to take responsibility and change and just like work for Albania and for Albanians.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:25)
So in 2024, the law on protective areas has been amended to allow strategic investments to be built on these protected areas.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:35)
This is history.

**Lewis Goodall** (2:37)
You didn't want to miss it?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:38)
Yeah, I don't want to miss it. We are part of the history. One day, it's going to be a Netflix series.
If Rama government goes down, we're going to be in Netflix series. It's going to come up.

**SPEAKER_8** (2:48)
Who's going to play you on Netflix?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:49)
I don't know. I'll play myself.

**Lewis Goodall** (2:52)
And what would your message be to the Trump family right now? To Ivanka Trump and to Jared Kushner?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:56)
Hands off our land. Our land is not for sale.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:59)
Hands off Albania.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:00)
Albania is not for sale. Do not come here. This is our country. We'll protect our country with every, every, every step of all Albania.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:09)
What would your message be to Ivanka Trump and the Trumps tonight?

**SPEAKER_5** (3:13)
Edirama, Donald Trump, you.

**Lewis Goodall** (3:48)
To understand what's happening in Albania right now, why hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets of this small, Balkan country, you need to go back a little bit. Funnily enough, to the 2021 summer holiday of Ivanka Trump and her billionaire investor husband, Jared Kushner.

**Ivanka Trump** (4:07)
We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the islands, we went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated, and it stayed with us ever since.
Over the course of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realize its potential and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care, because the land is so beautiful, that really the architecture has to be fully integrated into it, almost rise from it.

**Lewis Goodall** (4:41)
The island in question that she's talking about is Cezanne, Albania's largest island, almost entirely undeveloped. We'll go back there in a second. But you might think it would be difficult to get a project going so quickly on something that she seemed to think was so remote. Well, perhaps not if you happen to be on holiday with the Prime Minister of the country in question.

**Jared Kushner** (5:04)
I was on a vacation after we left government in the summer of 2021 We were on our friend Nat Rothschild's boat.
We got picked up in Montenegro, and then we started sailing over to Corfu, and we spent a couple of days in Albania. One of the nights there, Prime Minister Rama came to the boat. I had not met him when I was in government, but I was very, very impressed with his vision for what he wanted to do with Albania. I really didn't know anything about the country. I didn't understand the history and the darkness of the history with the communism and the terrible leadership actually led to it being fully undeveloped as a nation. But Eddie came in, he has one of the cool things I was attracted to is the fact that he seemed like a very skilled politician, as a very strong and smart leader, but also the fact that he was an artist.