After British protest group Led by Donkeys tracked down Larry Ellison’s 288-ft superyacht in the south of France in an anti-Trump stunt. The MAGA billionaire’s $160M luxury yacht was targeted in a stunt against his good friend, Donald Trump.
In their stunt, ‘Led by Donkey’ activists “renamed” the billionaire media mogul’s superyacht, by branding Ellison the US president’s chief “propagandist.”
We tracked down the superyacht owned by the world’s sixth richest man. Larry Ellison won’t like what we did to it 🛥️🏴☠️ pic.twitter.com/GjdGYrA1qb
— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) March 24, 2026
Led by Donkeys is a British guerrilla protest group that hit the international headlines in September 2025 while projecting images of Trump, 79, and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the walls of Windsor Castle during the President’s state visit to the UK.
As noted by the Independent, in their latest stunt on Tuesday, Led by Donkeys activists released footage revealing the activists approaching Ellison’s 288-ft Feadship vessel, the Musashi, by speedboat just off the French Riviera. The activists attached a sign to the hull of the superyacht, effectively 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, is a close friend of Donald Trump and is the co-founder of software giant Oracle. According to Bloomberg, he is said to be worth an estimated $201 billion, making him the sixth-wealthiest person in the world.
The $160M superyacht was built at the Dutch shipyard’s facility in Makkum in 2011. The vessel takes its name from a 16th-Century Japanese samurai. It measures 288 feet in length and comfortably accommodates 18 guests with nine cabins, and requires a crew of 23. The yacht’s annual running costs alone are estimated at $15 million.
Led by Donkeys used the “propagandist” label due to the Ellison family’s emergence as media owner brokers aligned with Donald Trump. Recently, the billionaire bankrolled his son, David’s Paramount Skydance takeover of CBS and its parent company, Paramount.
The deal was approved by the Trump administration, despite antitrust concerns, after CBS agreed to pay Trump $16 million in settlement of a defamation claim over a 60 Minutes edit. Following this, Ellison installed Bari Weiss, founder of the conservative outlet The Free Press, as editor-in-chief of CBS News, triggering a series of departures.
Meanwhile, the Ellison family is going ahead with a bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company. Trump is clearly more than happy about the arrangement, saying in October, “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing.” Trump then said of CNN, “The sooner David Ellison takes over, the better.”
However, not everyone in the media is celebrating the Ellison family’s expansion, as veteran tech journalist, Kara Swisher spoke at a Syracuse University media event Monday, saying she would quit CNN if Ellison acquires it.
Swisher told former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who left the network over its MAGA overhaul, “You don’t wanna work for the Ellisons. I’ve spent a lot of time with Larry Ellison, and he’s a terrible person.”
The journalist added that the Ellison family has “no interest in journalism,” and added that she can always move to the CNN rival, MS NOW, saying, “I refuse to work for an organization that doesn’t respect journalists.”
The superyacht stunt on the French Riviera isn’t the first venture of this scale by Led by Donkeys. The Epstein-focused Windsor Castle stunt resulted in the arrest of four Led by Donkeys activists on suspicion of malicious communications. However, all four activists were ultimately released with no charge.
A previous Led by Donkeys stunt saw the activists training their projectors on Tesla’s Berlin factory, placing the word “Heil” next to a still of Elon Musk making the gesture widely recognized as a Nazi salute.
