President Trump urged New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to “cherish” billionaires like Ken Griffin after the Citadel CEO threatened to bolt from a Park Avenue skyscraper project and move to Miami in response to the socialist mayor’s attacks.
“When you lose people like that, it’s sort of not recoverable,” Trump told WABC radio host Sid Rosenberg.
“Always you say something’s recoverable, right? But it’s not recoverable. Then they build something else. They’re going to be there for 30 years. They don’t come back. And you’ve got to do the opposite. You’ve got to cherish them,” Trump said.
“You got to bring them to the office. You got to meet them. You have to have dinner with them. You have to convince them not to leave, you’re going to make their life great, you’re going to help them with their building, with their project. You got to do it and I don’t know — it’s not hard to do, but maybe it is for some people.
“But you don’t want to lose people like Ken, that would be a big loss for New York.”
Griffin warned last week that his hedge fund Citadel would shift more jobs to Miami as a “direct consequence” of Mamdani’s rhetoric targeting wealthy New Yorkers.
The hedge fund billionaire said the mayor’s attacks had forced the firm to “double down” on Florida rather than expand further in Manhattan.
“We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision here with respect to his posting of that video,” Griffin told CNBC at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills on May 5.
The feud erupted after Mamdani filmed a slick social media video outside Griffin’s record-setting $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park South while touting a proposed “pied-à-terre” tax on luxury second homes worth more than $5 million.
Griffin called the stunt “creepy” and “weird” and later described the video as “frightening” after he watched it multiple times.
He warned the mayor’s rhetoric risked inflaming political extremism and cited the 2024 Midtown murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The Citadel founder also suggested Mamdani’s attacks could jeopardize a planned $4.5 billion Park Avenue tower being developed by Citadel alongside Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin Management.
Vornado chairman Steve Roth also blasted the mayor for the “ugly, unnecessary video stunt,” which Roth called “both irresponsible and dangerous.”
The controversy has rattled business leaders across the city, with Apollo Global Management also weighing a major expansion in either Florida or Texas amid fears that Mamdani’s “tax the rich” agenda is accelerating an exodus of finance jobs from New York.
