Ken Griffin says Mamdani’s attacks against him are – Business News
Ken Griffin known as Zohran Mamdani’s controversial social media post outdoors the Citadel founder’s swanky midtown penthouse “creepy weird” and finally “frightening” after watching the socialist NYC mayor invoke Griffin’s identify to tout a new tax plan on second properties of non-residents.
Griffin, who runs the Citadel Investment empire headquartered in Miami, was talking on the Milken Global Conference, and conceded he watched the video 3 times.
“I mean like you literally look at the first time, you’re like, you gotta be kidding me. Okay?” Griffin stated on the convention.
Ken Griffin, Founder, CEO and Co-chief Investment Officer at Citadel, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference 2026 in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May, 5, 2026. REUTERS
“And then the second time you’re like, you know what this is? Actually, this has gone from creepy to actually not really creepy, this has gone frightening.”
It was apparent Mamdani was attempting to make him a goal of the progressive left’s assault on wealth creators, together with the proposed tax on non-residents with properties price more than $5 million.
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In April, Mamdani stood outdoors Griffin’s penthouse on 220 Central Park South to advertise the so-called pied-a-terre tax — a transfer that generated speedy backlash from the business group as a class-warfare stunt that received’t generate a lot income, may trigger wealth creators to flee town, and would possibly stoke political violence.
Griffin cited the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot in 2024 whereas attending an investor convention in Midtown Manhattan by Luigi Mangione.
Griffin steered such rhetoric by Mamdani stokes “political violence.”
“The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was killed just a few blocks from my house,” he added.
“And anything that creates, like an agitation of the extremists on either side of the aisle is a frightening dynamic.”
Before the stunt, Griffin had been planning a main growth of Citadel’s footprint within the Big Apple, together with 1000’s of new jobs that can generate billions of {dollars} in financial exercise.
That is till Mamdani made him a poster baby for his tax scheme.
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Citadel has lately steered it might rethink its growth plans; on the convention Griffin stated Mamdani’s pointed remarks has pressured him to no less than scale back on the New York City footprint and broaden his build-out of the firm’s Miami hub.
Griffin famously moved Citadel’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022, citing town’s dysfunctional authorities and runaway crime.
“The mayor of New York has made clear to my partners and principally my New York partners . . . that we need to double down on our bet in Miami because we want to be in a state that embraces, business, that embraces education, that embraces personal freedom and liberty, and that embraces people having an opportunity to live the American Dream and a dream of earned success, not a dream of redistributive handouts that leave people dependent on government for their lives,” Griffin stated.
This week, in a fireplace chat right here with me, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mockingly branded Mamdani one of his “realtors of the year” — predicting that New York City’s socialist mayor will proceed to drive taxpayers, together with Griffin, out of New York City and down to the Sunshine State.
Griffin, who has sparred with president Trump over financial coverage, stated he admires the president’s “resiliency” for surviving a number of assassination makes an attempt.
“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.”
