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Steven Roth, chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust\u2014one of New York City\u2019s largest landlords and taxpayers\u2014used his company\u2019s Q1 2026 earnings call on Tuesday to deliver a six-minute rebuke of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling his viral \u201ctax the rich\u201d video \u201cirresponsible and dangerous\u201d and comparing the phrase itself to hate speech.<\/p>\n
Hours later, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin told CNBC<\/em> the same video had put him \u201cin harm\u2019s way,\u201d invoking the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson that occurred just blocks from his Manhattan home.<\/p>\n The comments from both Roth and Griffin are the turning point of a serious clash between City Hall and New York\u2019s business establishment, with the CEOs personally calling out the new mayor and expressing distaste with the pointed remark at Griffin in his ongoing effort to tax the rich.<\/p>\n On Tax Day, Mamdani stood outside 220 Central Park South, where Griffin owns a penthouse he bought for $238 million, and announced the city\u2019s first pied-\u00e0-terre tax on luxury second homes above $5 million. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we\u2019re taxing the rich,\u201d he said in the video, which hit 52 million views on X. The tax, backed by Governor Kathy Hochul though it still requires Albany\u2019s approval, would generate an estimated $500 million annually.<\/p>\n Vornado built the building which houses Griffin\u2019s apartment, and holds a 36% stake in the joint venture with Griffin and the Rudin family to build a $6 billion, 62-story super-tall office tower at 350 Park Avenue, a project now hanging in the balance, which was referenced not only by Roth but Griffin\u2019s COO at Citadel, Gerald Beeson.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ugly and unnecessary video stunt is personal to Ken, and sort of personal to me too,\u201d Roth told investors on the call, according to The New York Times<\/em>. \u201cWe are all shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt in front of Ken\u2019s home and single him out for ridicule.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs and supporting the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in mid-town New York,\u201d wrote Beeson in a letter to employees. \u201cThe project\u2014if we move forward\u2014will entail more than $6 billion dollars of spending.\u201d<\/p>\n On that building specifically, Vornado faces a mid-July deadline to commit to the venture or sell its stake to Griffin\u2019s company. \u201cCitadel has to be committed,\u201d Roth said in the call, but added Vornado is expected to go \u201call in\u201d on the project.<\/p>\n Roth told investors Vornado will pay approximately $560 million in real estate taxes to New York City this year, a figure he said places the company in the top three taxpayers in the city: \u201cAnd that doesn\u2019t begin to count the personal income taxes that I and our Vornado population pay to the city and state of New York. We work our a\u2013es off.\u201d<\/p>\n Vornado owns nearly 20 million square feet of Manhattan office space, is the borough\u2019s largest street retail owner with 2.4 million square feet, and controls 10 million square feet in the area around Penn Station. It has invested $2.5 billion revitalizing that district over the past decade: redeveloping 5 million square feet of office space, creating 1.1 million square feet of new retail, and partnering on the Moynihan Train Hall. With tenants that include Meta, Samsung, Morgan Stanley, and Cisco, the company projected $275 million in capital expenditures for 2025, with billions more in the pipeline.<\/p>\n Roth compared the phrase \u201ctax the rich,\u201d when deployed with contempt by politicians, to \u201csome disgusting racial slurs, and even the phrase \u2018from the river to the sea.’\u201d He argued the wealthiest 1% pay 50% of the city\u2019s income taxes and \u201cshould be praised and thanked.\u201d <\/p>\n Roth invoked Amazon\u2019s abandoned HQ2 as a cautionary precedent, warned \u201cthis fence cannot be mended by a short, terse, insincere private apology,\u201d and urged Mamdani to \u201cbegin every day being business-welcoming and business-friendly as his first priority.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffin, whose net worth exceeds $51 billion, said the safety dimension was what crossed the line. <\/p>\n \u201cHe seems to have forgotten that the CEO of another American company was assassinated just blocks from where I live in New York,\u201d he said on CNBC<\/em>. At the Milken Conference he called the video \u201ccreepy and weird\u201d and \u201cfrightening.\u201d At the Norges Bank conference in Oslo, he called it \u201ca profound lack of judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffin said at Milken the video confirmed his decision to \u201cdouble down\u201d on Miami, where he\u2019s building a 54-story headquarters. <\/p>\n \u201cWe will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor\u2019s poor decision,\u201d he said. (Griffin moved Citadel\u2019s headquarters due to rising crime. He also had a public feud with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and his proposed graduated income tax).<\/p>\n In a statement to Fortune,<\/em> Press Secretary Joe Calvello acknowledged Griffin as \u201ca major employer in our City and a powerful figure in our economy.\u201d He then added:\u201dMayor Mamdani wants all New Yorkers to succeed. That includes business owners and entrepreneurs who create good-paying jobs and make this city the economic engine of America.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat does not negate the fact, however, that our tax system is fundamentally broken. It rewards extreme wealth while working people are pushed to the brink. The status quo is unsustainable and unjust,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cIf we want this city to become a place that working people can afford, we need meaningful tax reform that includes the wealthiest New Yorkers contributing their fair share.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Vornado #CEO #Steven #Roth #fires #York #City #Mayor #Zohran #Mamdani #targeting #Ken #Griffin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steven Roth, chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust\u2014one of New York City\u2019s largest landlords and taxpayers\u2014used his company\u2019s Q1 2026 earnings call on Tuesday to deliver a six-minute rebuke… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,556,3404,1879,1878,1871,3407,1873,3400,2468,3403,3408,417,3402,3405,3406,3401],"class_list":["post-1890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ceo","tag-city","tag-fires","tag-griffin","tag-ken","tag-ken-griffin","tag-mamdani","tag-mayor","tag-new-york-city","tag-roth","tag-steven","tag-targeting","tag-taxes","tag-vornado","tag-york","tag-zohran","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Tax the Rich video on Tax Day<\/h2>\n
City Hall vs. the billionaires<\/h2>\n