A CNBC anchor blasted far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after he filmed a video touting a proposed pied-à-terre tax outside hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s Manhattan penthouse.
Shooting his segment outside Griffin’s $238 million spread at 220 Central Park South, a smirking Mamdani on Thursday declared, “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich.”
Hizzoner pointed to up to the Citadel CEO’s apartment as an example of the kind of luxury property targeted by his new “pied-à-terre tax,” adding: “Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.”
The video which was posted to Mamdani’s official social media accounts have gone viral, accumulating tens of millions of views online.
Sara Eisen, a co-anchor on “Squawk on the Street” and “Money Movers,” warned the move risks backfiring, noting Griffin “employs thousands of people in NYC” and is “investing billions more and creating thousands more jobs” — adding that “making him feel unwelcome and demonizing him seems risky.”
“Ken Griffin employs thousands of people in NYC and is planning to build the tallest office tower on Park Ave., investing billions more and creating thousands more jobs,” Eisen wrote on X on Thursday, adding that “[f]or that reason, he’s also here in NYC a lot, @NYCMayor.”
“Meantime Miami is welcoming him and his firm, with the massive jobs, investment and tax revenue he’s bringing,” Eisen wrote.
The Post has sought comment from Mamdani and Griffin.
Eisen said Griffin relocated the headquarters of his hedge fund from Chicago to Miami “because of bad policy.”
The proposed pied-a-terre tax, unveiled by Gov. Kathy Hochul, would impose an annual levy on luxury homes worth more than $5 million owned by non-full-time residents, targeting ultra-wealthy property owners whose units often sit empty.
When reached by The Post, Eisen expanded on her X post, warning that while “there’s no place like NYC” where businesses “have strong and growing footholds here,” Mamdani and other left-leaning politicos “shouldn’t take that for granted.”
“The general attitude I hear from business leaders is ‘We can probably get through four years of anti-business policies, but the danger is the longer-term trend’,” Eisen, the veteran business journalist, told The Post on Friday.
“Bad policies have consequences, as we’ve seen a migration of business out of California and into Florida, for instance.”
Eisen added that while New York “will always be special…it may not be as vibrant of a place for new offices and expansion in the future if we go down this path of demonizing them and disincentivizing them to be here.”
Griffin has deep ties to New York’s high-end real estate and business world, headlined by his record-setting $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park South.
At the time of the 2019 purchase, it was the largest sum ever paid for a residence in the United States. There have been several homes that have listed for higher prices, but there are no verified closings as of Friday.
Griffin has since expanded his footprint with tens of millions more in purchases at the elite 740 Park Avenue.
He is also backing the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, a roughly 62-story, nearly 2 million-square-foot supertall expected to cost about $4.5 billion, with Citadel and Citadel Securities set to anchor the tower as his future Manhattan headquarters.
Griffin has long tied his business decisions to concerns about crime and the broader climate in major Northern cities, warning in 2021 that Chicago was “becoming ever more difficult to have this as our global headquarters, a city which has so much violence” and likening conditions to “like Afghanistan on a good day and that’s a problem.”
He later went further, saying, “I’ve lived in a failed city-state” and recounting how “I had 25 bullet holes in the front of my building where I lived.”
Those concerns — along with taxes and regulation — helped drive Citadel’s move to Miami, which Griffin has cast as a sharper contrast to struggling big cities.
He has argued that in “Northern cities awash in red tape, people talk about crime and how bleak the future is,” while in Florida he sees “optimism in the air,” framing the shift as part of a broader migration of capital and talent to lower-tax, business-friendly regions.
