On the morning of March 24, 2026, a speedboat carrying members of the British activist group Led By Donkeys approached a 280-foot superyacht moored on the French Riviera. The yacht — named the Musashi and valued at approximately $160 million, according to reporting by The Independent and AOL — belongs to Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle Corporation and, according to Forbes, the world's sixth-richest person as of January 2026, with a net worth of approximately $225.8 billion.

Within minutes, the activists had covered the vessel with a large banner reading: "The Trump Propagandist." Footage of the action, released by Led By Donkeys on Tuesday, spread rapidly across social media and was covered by Al Jazeera, The Independent, Mediaite, and multiple international outlets within hours.

What Led By Donkeys Said

In the video accompanying the stunt, a Led By Donkeys spokesperson explained their reasoning in specific, verifiable terms. They described Ellison as "the world's sixth richest man," a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and "the largest private donor to the Israeli military" — a reference to his reported $16.6 million donation to the Israeli Defense Forces in 2017, cited by The Independent. They noted that Netanyahu's family had, at some point, vacationed on Ellison's private island, a fact Ellison himself acknowledged publicly years ago.

The group then laid out its core argument: "Trump recently handed the Ellison family control of TikTok in the U.S. Almost immediately, prominent pro-Palestinian voices were silenced. Last year, the Ellisons bought Paramount, giving them control of CBS News. The channel's coverage of the attack on Iran has been notably pro-war, and the Ellisons will soon take over Warner Brothers, giving them control of CNN."

The group concluded: "The billionaires are buying up the news to support their friends, the politicians pitching our world into chaos and war. Then they jump onto their superyachts, accountable to nobody."

The Ellison Media Empire: What Is Accurate

The factual claims embedded in Led By Donkeys' script are largely verifiable through public reporting:

TikTok: Oracle received a significant stake in TikTok's U.S. operations under a deal completed in early 2026, brokered with Trump administration support, as reported by Florida Today and others. Larry Ellison's personal relationship with Trump predates and overlaps with the deal.

Paramount: In August 2025, David Ellison's company Paramount Skydance completed an $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global, per Forbes reporting. David Ellison, Larry's son, serves as chairman and CEO of the combined entity, Paramount Skydance.

Warner Bros. Discovery: In February 2026, Reuters reported that Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to be acquired by Paramount Skydance in a deal valued at $110 billion, with a $7 billion termination fee if regulators block it, according to Wired. The deal remains pending regulatory approval as of publication.

CNN: In December 2025, it was reported by multiple outlets that David Ellison had promised Trump "sweeping changes" at CNN if the Warner Bros. deal closed. Mediaite further reported that Larry Ellison had spoken to senior White House officials about removing two CNN hosts whom the president disliked. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly said he "couldn't wait" for the Ellisons to take over CNN, and Trump personally cited the prospective CNN acquisition as one of his administration's wins.

As Slate summarized in a March 2026 analysis, Trump's relationship with Ellison "has paid off literal dividends for his software juggernaut Oracle, winning it a major stake in TikTok, a significant stock-price bump, and a raft of friendly A.I. deals and regulations."

Who Is Led By Donkeys?

Led By Donkeys was founded in December 2018 by four friends — Oliver Knowles, Ben Stewart, James Sadri, and Will Rose — who met to discuss their frustrations with Brexit at a pub in Stoke Newington, London. All four had connections to environmental campaign group Greenpeace. According to Wikipedia and France24, the group was formally established on July 10, 2019, and has since expanded far beyond its anti-Brexit origins.

Their early work involved guerrilla billboard campaigns plastering politicians' own past social media posts on advertising hoardings across the UK. They later escalated to high-visibility stunts: projecting messages on the Houses of Parliament and the White Cliffs of Dover, carving messages into beaches and fields, and deploying crowds with banners at marches. The group has targeted Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and David Cameron, and after Labour's 2024 election victory, declared itself an "accountability project" with both major parties as fair game.

The group won the Best Social Media Campaign award at the 2019 Social Purpose Awards and gold in the National Social Impact category at the 2020 Outdoor Media Awards, per Wikipedia. Their videos routinely reach millions of views.

The Ellison superyacht stunt represents a significant geographic and thematic expansion — from UK domestic politics to American billionaire power and the international press freedom debate.

Why It Lands Now

The timing of the stunt is not accidental. The Ellison media empire is at a pivotal moment: the Warner Bros. Discovery deal is pending regulatory review, TikTok's ownership structure remains contested, and the Iran war has put the editorial posture of outlets like CBS News under intense scrutiny. Critics from across the political spectrum — including, notably, Megyn Kelly — have raised questions about whether media concentration and billionaire political alignment is distorting war coverage.

The Led By Donkeys action packages those abstract concerns into a single, shareable image: a massive banner on a $160 million yacht moored on the Mediterranean, with a six-word message summarizing months of structural criticism. Whether it moves public opinion or policy is a separate question. Whether it moves algorithms, it already has.

Neither Larry Ellison nor Oracle responded to media requests for comment as of publication, per Mediaite and The Independent's coverage.

What This Is Not

Led By Donkeys' characterization of Ellison's influence is advocacy, not neutrally established fact. The claim that CBS News coverage of the Iran war has been "notably pro-war" due to Ellison ownership is an assertion made by an activist group, not a demonstrated editorial audit. Similarly, the causal link between TikTok's ownership structure and the suppression of pro-Palestinian content is disputed — platform moderation decisions involve many variables. The group's framing is a political argument, and should be read as one.

What is not disputed: the Ellison family's media footprint is real, rapidly expanding, and unprecedented in its combination of tech infrastructure (Oracle, cloud AI), social media (TikTok), and legacy broadcast journalism (CBS, CNN, Warner Bros. properties). Whether that concentration warrants the label "Trump Propagandist" is a matter of opinion. Whether it warrants serious scrutiny is not.

Sources: The Independent (March 25, 2026); Mediaite (March 25, 2026); Al Jazeera (March 24, 2026); AOL/PA Media (March 25, 2026); Forbes (January 28, 2026 — Ellison net worth); Forbes (February 27, 2026 — Paramount/WBD merger); Reuters (February 2026 — WBD deal terms); Wired (February 2026 — deal value); Slate (March 2026 — Ellison/Trump analysis); CNN Business (February 26, 2026 — David Ellison interview); Wikipedia — Led By Donkeys entry; France24 (October 2023 — Led By Donkeys profile); Florida Today (January 28, 2026 — TikTok/Oracle).