Vornado CEO Steven Roth ‘shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt’ and says Zohran Mamdani should know better than to target Ken Griffin

Steven Roth, chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust—one of New York City’s largest landlords and taxpayers—used his company’s Q1 2026 earnings call on Tuesday to deliver a six-minute rebuke of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling his viral “tax the rich” video “irresponsible and dangerous” and comparing the phrase itself to hate speech. Hours later, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin told CNBC the same video had put him “in harm’s way,” invoking the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson that occurred just blocks from his Manhattan home. The comments from both Roth and Griffin are the turning point of a serious clash between City Hall and New York’s 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. A Tax the Rich video on Tax Day On Tax Day, Mamdani stood outside 220 Central Park South, where Griffin owns a penthouse he bought for $238 million, and announced the city’s first pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes above $5 million. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich,” he said in the video, which hit 52 million views on X. The tax, backed by Governor Kathy Hochul though it still requires Albany’s approval, would generate an estimated $500 million annually. Vornado built the building which houses Griffin’s 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’s COO at Citadel, Gerald Beeson. “The ugly and unnecessary video stunt is personal to Ken, and sort of personal to me too,” Roth told investors on the call, according to The New York Times. “We are all shocked that our y