It started with an undeniably creepy, stalky video starring New York City’s dashing young communist mayor, Zohran Kwame Mamdani. The mayor posted the video on Tax Day, April 15. In it, he announced the creation of a so-called pied-à-terre tax — a tax on luxury second homes within city limits. That was the commie part of the video; the creepy, stalky part was that he chose to film it in front of a building that houses a penthouse belonging to one individual billionaire. Mamdani called the man out by name — Ken Griffin, founder and co-owner of the Citadel hedge fund and securities empire — and stoked envy by disclosing what he had paid for his apartment. Observe:
Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich. pic.twitter.com/Wky2LFXC9W
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 15, 2026
Griffin was understandably disturbed by Mamdani’s dox-y message. “It was creepy and weird,” he told moderator Sara Eisen at the Milken Global Conference on Tuesday. “I mean, like, Knock, knock, knock on the window. Like, the mayor of New York City?”
“I had to go back and look at it again,” Griffin related. “I mean, like, you literally looked at it the first time, you’re like, ‘You got to be kidding me,’ okay? And then the second time, you’re like, ‘You know what? This, actually, this has gone from creepy to actually not really creepy — this has gone to frightening. Because the CEO of United Healthcare was killed just a few blocks from my house, and anything that creates, like, an agitation in the extremists on either side of the aisle is a frightening dynamic.”
He’s not wrong: It’s chilling stuff.
Something the menacing mayor never mentioned in his covetous propaganda clip is that Griffin is already an extremely generous benefactor of the Big Apple. My colleague Robert Spencer reported in April:
The thing is, however, that Ken Griffin is not really a problem for New York City. The Washington Free Beacon reported Saturday that Griffin, along with legendary music mogul David Geffen, made a “joint $400 million donation to Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2023. This constituted “the largest single donation the cancer center has ever received.” Griffin has also given “$40 million to the Museum of Modern Art, $40 million to the Museum of Natural History, and $15 million to the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation.” The Free Beacon adds: “Sources tell us his gifts to city institutions total around $600 million.”
All told, Griffin “has donated more than $2.5 billion to advance education, opportunity, and health sciences initiatives that significantly transform people’s lives,” according to Citadel’s website.
Then, there are also the enormous contributions that Griffin’s business endeavors make to NYC’s overall prosperity. “…Griffin, whose Citadel and Citadel Securities together employ approximately 5,000 people, is currently building Midtown’s tallest skyscraper right on Park Ave.,” the Free Beacon noted, “something a mayor with any understanding of how to help working people would be welcoming and celebrating.”
It’s never enough, of course. Imagine how it must feel, after accomplishing what this man has accomplished and giving back what this man has given back, to be low-key threatened and simultaneously offered up as a gift of plunder to the city’s Marxist masses by a preening socialist who’s never built a single thing in his life.
The real, visceral gut-punch for Griffin had to have been the potentially deadly doxing by the mayor of New York City. The New York Post commented:
Griffin, who has sparred with president Trump over economic policy, said he admires the president’s “resiliency” for surviving multiple assassination attempts.
“You know, I’ve had my differences with President Trump over the years,” he added, “but the idea that he has survived three assassination attempts is just, it’s just incomprehensible. I mean, could you imagine the state of mind that you would be in having survived not one, not two, but now three separate [attempts?]”
Maybe it’s finally sinking in for Griffin that Marxists are the worst people. I’ve said multiple times that it’s wealthy business leaders’ and investors’ own fault for not taking the communist threat in New York City seriously. The moment Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted a former U.S. president on B.S. charges — March 30, 2023 — every wealthy person who chose to stay in that nascent s-hole has no one to blame but himself.
Better late than never, though, even if Griffin stands to lose substantial investment by getting the heck out of there.
“So where does that leave us at 350 Park?” Eisen asked him at the Milken conference.
“That leaves us with the fact that we went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building,” he replied.
“You’re bailing?”
Griffin would not answer directly. He began by insisting that moving his company to NYC in 2022 was the right move before launching into an encomium of Florida as a business-friendly state.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 in your face commie mamdani eat shit 💩 pic.twitter.com/CiSKkpeKhn
— Mariana (@NacaFierce) May 6, 2026
Sounds like it will be a drawn-out, long goodbye from a man who hates to admit it’s over. But it’s over. Griffin will never see New York City the same way again. Even if Mamdani is no longer mayor someday, the people who elected him will still be the voting majority in that rotten apple.
Related: There’s a Name for What They’re Doing to Donald Trump
It is super-sad that the American left’s zombie army, which it has built with a combination of a wholesale mental illness cultivation policy and polluting the culture with political hate and fear, has made our country unsafe for leaders. Be they political (Donald Trump), business (UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson), legal (Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh), or social (Charlie Kirk), anyone who steps up and leads is now a target.
Except for leftists, of course.
Who can blame Griffin for not wanting to die at the hands of the next whacked-out leftist zombie foot-soldier? For not wanting his family to deal with his loss simultaneously with the cheers of the despicable, hardened left? And for not wanting his fairly earned fortune confiscated and redistributed to strengthen the very system that created this poisonous atmosphere?
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