Topline
Trump weighed in on the spat between billionaire Ken Griffin and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over tax increases Tuesday, saying that losing someone that pays a lot of taxes in the city would be “not recoverable.”
Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Sipa/Bloomberg
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Key Facts
Trump, in a Tuesday interview with New York radio host Sid Rosenberg, said losing “people like Ken… would be a big loss for New York,” adding that losing wealthy taxpayers would create a “dangerous” situation.
Last month, Mamdani used Griffin’s $238 million penthouse, the most expensive U.S. home sale on record, in the background of a video promoting his new proposal to hike taxes on pieds-à-terre (secondary homes inhabited part-time by the wealthy).
In response, Griffin pushed back, vowing to expand his hedge fund business in Miami instead of previously planned expansions in NYC.
On Tuesday, Mamdani scrapped a 10% property tax hike proposed to help close a budget gap over the next two years, with the reversal expected to be reflected in his executive budget Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
Key Background
Griffin’s feud with Mamdani is the latest chapter in a long-running debate over whether high taxes and quality-of-life concerns drive the ultra-wealthy out of major U.S. cities. The Citadel founder relocated himself and his hedge fund from Chicago to Miami in 2022, citing crime and public safety, and has since become a prominent symbol of so-called “millionaire flight.” Florida has no state income tax, while New York’s top earners pay some of the highest combined state and city rates in the country. Griffin called Mamdani’s tax-hike video “creepy and weird,” objecting to being singled out by name. Mamdani campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fund expanded city services—proposals that have drawn pushback not only from business leaders but from Governor Kathy Hochul, whose approval would be needed for most income or corporate tax changes. The pied-à-terre tax that sparked the Griffin feud is separate from the across-the-board property tax hike Mamdani dropped Tuesday. That second-home surcharge is still on the table as part of ongoing state budget negotiations in Albany, though the details of how it would be structured and enforced remain unresolved.