“Maybe 10 years ago, he was like, ‘I want Marco Rubio to be president,’” the same source says.
Many players first started hearing of Ellison in the lead-up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary. At that point, after years of donating to both parties, Ellison was seen internally as doing Trump a small favor by pledging his financial support to senator Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina. My sources considered Scott to be a solid VP contender, if a slight long shot. He was seen as harmless at worst, and at best a potential insurance policy in the event of a prolonged primary campaign—a potential spoiler candidate capable of pulling support from rivals, particularly fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley.
“His involvement with GOP politicians like Tim Scott was the appetizer,” a second Republican familiar with Ellison’s political activities tells me, “and Trump is the main course.”
TikTok, Paramount, AI—Oh My
Ellison, who’s almost two years older than Trump, has been setting the groundwork for the successor to his family empire. The weight of his legacy falls on the shoulders of his 42-year-old son, David.
Once an aspiring actor, David played a key role alongside James Franco in the 2006 WWI drama Flyboys—which he also partially financed. When his onscreen career didn’t take off, he figured he would be better not just behind the camera but up in the C-suite.
David’s known political donations have been entirely to Democrats. But he is not known for having the same tactical nous as Larry.
“This is the exhausting part of it,” a campaign staffer with knowledge of donor outreach involving the Ellison family tells me, describing David as someone who carried himself with the confidence of a business tycoon despite, at the point they interacted, only having been born to one. “I’ve dealt with a lot of people through my career who are nepo babies. Some of them feel like they’re moguls in their own right.”
This source—who, like others, requested anonymity to speak candidly about the political influence of the Ellison family—said the nepo babies of the ultra wealthy tend to fall into two camps: There are those with pet policy issues and a desire to shape their legacy through some notion of making a difference, and there are those who want to accumulate power and influence for their own sake.
“He was always part of that latter group.”
Representatives for Larry and David Ellison did not return requests for comment.
While my Trumpworld and Republican sources who have dealt with Larry Ellison’s political activities say they take him to be more or less a true believer on most of their key issues at this point—most notably seen in his support for the Israeli military, a focus on improving “blue cities,” and his financial interests in the AI industry—far less is known about his heir apparent.
With a still vaguely described domestic iteration of TikTok and scores of TV channels from news to entertainment coming into the family’s portfolio, it remains to be seen whether David Ellison will become a Murdoch-type figure, setting the agenda for the modern GOP and in control of properties occupying the top spot in the conservative media ecosystem in the way Fox News did for the past three decades.
