Galveston, Texas - February 2023: Luxury superyacht Boardwalk owned by billionaire Tilman Fertitta. He owns the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino and the Houston Rockets basketball team. (Photo credit: Ceri Breeze / Shutterstock)
President Donald Trump's ambassador to Italy has angered residents of his host country with plans to bring his $450 million superyacht to Venice during one of the city's most significant annual festivals, in a trip he has branded "coastal diplomacy."
Billionaire Tilman Fertitta, a hospitality mogul who owns the NBA's Houston Rockets, began a weeks-long tour of the Italian coast on June 13 in Civitavecchia near Rome to mark America's 250th anniversary, reported The Daily Beast, with stops planned in Naples, Genoa, Palermo and Cefalù.
His 380-foot yacht Boardwalk features six decks, two helipads, two pools and a beach club.
The tour is now set to bring the superyacht to Venice next month, timed to coincide with the Festa del Redentore on July 18 and 19, a centuries-old festival commemorating the city's liberation from a 16th-century plague. A U.S. Embassy source confirmed the timing to The Times of London.
The visit has reignited fury over Jeff Bezos's lavish $50 million wedding in Venice last year, which drew widespread protests over the use of the historic city as a backdrop for displays of extreme wealth.
"This is about the exploitation of Venice," said Federica Toninello of Laboratorio Occupato Morion, the activist group behind protests against the Bezos wedding. "Flaunting that level of wealth is a slap in the face to people who are increasingly struggling to make ends meet and find a home in Venice."
Toninello said the group is meeting this week to plan demonstrations, which could include marches, banners hung from bridges, and blockades of canals. It remains unclear where a vessel of Boardwalk's size would even be able to dock, given that festival preparations will close off major waterways.
The controversy comes amid a separate diplomatic rift between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after the 80-year-old president claimed she had "begged" him for a photo at the G7 summit in Paris — an assertion Meloni publicly and forcefully denied, calling his attacks "senseless."
Aboard his yacht on Thursday, Fertitta downplayed the tension, telling reporters that the U.S.-Italy relationship remains strong and dismissing the Trump-Meloni clash as a "small hitch."
The U.S. Embassy in Rome has not yet responded to a request for comment.