Activists have “renamed” the $160 million superyacht belonging to Donald Trump’s billionaire media mogul buddy Larry Ellison—branding him the president’s chief “propagandist.”
The stunt was carried out by Led By Donkeys, the British guerrilla protest group that made international headlines last September when it projected images of Trump, 79, and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein onto the walls of Windsor Castle during the president’s state visit to the U.K.
On Tuesday, the group released footage showing activists approaching Ellison’s 288-foot Feadship vessel, the Musashi, moored off the French Riviera, by speedboat.
They then attached large lettering to the hull, renaming it “The Trump Propagandist.”
“We tracked down the superyacht owned by the world’s sixth-richest man,” Led By Donkeys said. “Larry Ellison won’t like what we did to it.”
Ellison, 81, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is worth an estimated $201 billion according to Bloomberg, making him the sixth-wealthiest person on earth.
The 288-foot Feadship vessel, built at the Dutch shipyard’s facility in Makkum in 2011, takes its name from a 16th-Century Japanese samurai. It measures 288 feet in length, accommodates 18 guests across nine cabins, and requires a crew of 23.
Its annual running costs are estimated at an eye-watering $15 million.
The “propagandist” label reflects the Ellison family’s rapid emergence as Trump-aligned media power brokers.
Ellison bankrolled his son David’s Paramount Skydance takeover of CBS and its parent company, Paramount. The Trump administration approved the deal despite antitrust concerns, after CBS agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a defamation claim over a 60 Minutes edit.
David Ellison subsequently installed Bari Weiss, founder of conservative outlet The Free Press, as CBS News editor-in-chief, triggering a wave of departures.
The family is now pressing ahead with a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.
Trump has been effusive about the arrangement. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” he said of the Ellisons in October, praising their acquisition of Paramount. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went further, saying of CNN: “The sooner David Ellison takes over, the better.”
Ellison’s bond with Trump predates the media empire-building. In November 2020, days after Biden defeated Trump, Ellison joined a private call with the president’s allies—including Fox News host Sean Hannity and Sen. Lindsey Graham—that was “focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote,” as the Washington Post reported at the time.
The call was organized by the pro-Trump group True the Vote.
Not everyone in the media business is cheering the Ellison family’s expansion. Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher told a Syracuse University media event on Monday that she would quit CNN if the Ellisons acquired it.
Addressing former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who departed the network following its MAGA overhaul, Swisher said: “You don’t wanna work for the Ellisons. I’ve spent a lot of time with Larry Ellison, and he’s a terrible person.”
She added that the family had “no interest in journalism,” and said she could always move to CNN rival MS NOW. “I refuse to work for an organization that doesn’t respect journalists,” she added.
The French Riviera stunt is not Led By Donkeys’ first venture of this scale.
Before their Epstein-Trump stunt, they trained their projectors on Tesla’s Berlin factory, placing the word “Heil” alongside a still of Elon Musk making a gesture widely compared to a Nazi salute.
The Daily Beast has approached Donald Trump and Larry Ellison for comment.
