Mamdani’s ‘tax the rich’ slogan is ‘just as hateful’ as racial slurs, New York real estate titan says | CNN Business

No one likes higher taxes. But New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax wealthy residents’ second homes has elicited a highly emotional response from two of the city’s richest. “Creepy and weird,” is what Ken Griffin had to say Tuesday at a conference about Mamdani’s campaign-style video touting the tax outside the hedge fund manager’s $238 million penthouse. Steven Roth, the CEO of real estate giant Vornado, went further Tuesday on an earnings call. “I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that the Anti-Defamation League labels an antisemitic threat. Mamdani announced a plan last month to tax New York City’s luxury second homes with market values above $5 million, saying it would fulfill his central campaign promise to “tax the rich.” He singled out Griffin’s penthouse as a prime example of the “fundamentally unfair system” that allows the city’s richest to store their wealth in homes that sit empt