Trump's billionaire ambassador to Italy is running his diplomacy from a $450 million yacht

Tilman Fertitta has spent this summer conducting American diplomacy in Italy from the deck of a yacht he owns personally, and around 300 people clashed with riot police in Venice over its arrival.

The Boardwalk is 384 feet long, cost about $450 million, and carries two helipads, two swimming pools, a spa, a gym and a scuba room. Built by the German yard Lürssen and delivered early this year, it displaces roughly 5,350 tonnes and accommodates 14 guests and 48 crew. It is one of six vessels Fertitta owns.

He has been using it for what he calls the Freedom 250 Coastal Diplomacy Italy Tour, a months-long circuit of the Italian coast marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, hosting receptions for Italian political and business figures. Naples has served as the main base. Fertitta estimates the two-and-a-half-month tour will cost him about a million dollars of his own money on top of the vessel.

Venice was where it turned. Protesters gathered on a Friday evening in July as the Boardwalk arrived during the Redentore festival, which commemorates the end of the 1576 plague and culminates in fireworks over St Mark's Basin. Police pushed back demonstrators trying to reach the ship. Signs read that Venice is not for sale.

Daniele Giordano, secretary of the CGIL union in Venice, called it a disgrace that the city was welcoming the yacht during the festival, and said its presence represented the opposite of the union's idea of environmental and social sustainability. One demonstrator told Reuters it was strange to have to struggle so hard to make people understand that the city is not for sale, describing a place constantly emptied of housing, public services and welfare and sold to billionaires.

The organisers were explicit about the precedent. At a meeting in June, the activist Stella Faye said they had ruined Jeff Bezos's wedding party the previous year and would ruin the ambassador's tour this year.

Fertitta, 69, was sworn in as ambassador to Italy and San Marino in May 2025. He was born in Galveston, Texas, attended Texas Tech and the University of Houston without taking a degree, and built his fortune in hospitality: Landry's, the Golden Nugget hotels and casinos, Bubba Gump Shrimp. He owns the Houston Rockets. Forbes ranks him 109th on its list of the wealthiest Americans, and his official biography puts his net worth at $11.3 billion.

He is a longtime Trump donor who hosted a Houston fundraiser for the 2024 campaign. On confirmation he resigned from Landry's and from the University of Houston System board of regents, but kept his Rockets ownership, telling the State Department he would not involve himself in matters affecting the NBA or the team while serving.

The Italian government has defended him. Defence Minister Guido Crosetto told the Washington Post that Fertitta's main asset is his fondness for Italy and his sense of connection to it, and that Trump respects him, describing him as one of the few people who can call the president and talk for half an hour about anything.

Fertitta has answered the criticism in his own register. Asked about the Italian security presence around the yacht, he said the boats and the people are out there doing something and that it is good exercise for them. Showing CNN around the Boardwalk in August, he made a point of the family kitchen he insisted on installing, saying big boats never have one.

The tour is winding down. What it demonstrated is that a private fortune of this size is no longer a background fact about a political appointee. In Venice it was the reason several hundred people turned out.