Lifelong New Yorker and real estate investor Charles Kushner is fleeing NYC for Florida because of, he says, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and First Lady Rama Duwaji’s antisemitism.
“I don’t want to pay taxes and live in a city with a blatantly antisemitic mayor and his antisemitic wife, period,” Kushner told The Post. “I also don’t want to live in the city with the people who voted for him.”
Kushner said his decision was driven less by Mamdani’s socialist policies than by what he described as the mayor’s hostility toward Jews and Israel — pointing to Mamdani’s refusal to march in the Israel Day Parade, his call to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested as a war criminal, his outreach to Columbia University protesters who celebrated Hamas and Duwaji seeming to celebrate the horrific attacks on October 7.
“I don’t think you can reason with people that celebrate brutality on October 7th and say it was a hoax,” said Kushner, who is currently serving as US Ambassador to France and living in Paris for the time being. “I don’t think they are people worth talking to. I speak to a lot of people that don’t have political views that I have, and there’s two sides, and I respect everybody’s opinion, but I don’t respect anybody that celebrates murder, rape, brutality.”
Kushner also called out how Mamdani’s rhetoric and his rise to power reflect a broader resentment toward people who have built wealth — the same sentiment he said was on display when Mamdani attacked billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin in a viral video.
In a clip touting his pied-à-terre tax, Mamdani called out Griffin by name as an example of the ultra-rich who “store their wealth in New York City real estate but don’t actually live here full time.”
“You know, Ken Griffin worked hard to earn all that money,” Kushner said. “He took a lot of risk to earn all that money. That’s what America’s about.”
While Kushner hasn’t entirely given up on his hometown — he plans to become a Florida resident but will hold onto his New York apartment and pay that pied-à-terre tax — he fears that Mamdani may be the one person to ruin the city..
“I think there’s a lot of people like me that love New York City,” he said, adding that he hopes the city is “so robust and such an energetic and strong city that hopefully one person can’t ruin it.
“Bill de Blasio couldn’t ruin it, because the city is such an economic center, and really a cultural center, and it’s the center of the world,” he said. “But if I was a betting person, if one person could ruin it or bring it down, it’s this mayor.”
Kushner, a longtime real estate developer and investor, built Kushner Companies into one of the country’s best-known family real estate firms. In 2004 he pled guilty to tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign contributions but was later pardoned by President Trump. His eldest son, Jared Kushner, is a former senior White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law. His younger son, Joshua Kushner, founded Thrive Capital.
Kushner argued that Mamdani’s supporters should be trying to seize the unique opportunities the city offers — not punish those who already have. “The opportunity is there for all Americans,” he said, adding. “I hope they find happiness with this moronic mayor.”
Meanwhile, he’ll be enjoying life in the Sunshine State.
“I’m going to have a very nice life as a resident of Florida, with a lot of family and a lot of friends that are doing exactly that, have done, and continue to do exactly the same thing,” he said.
