New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched a very public war on billionaire Ken Griffin, and it has nothing to do with justice or lawbreaking. Mamdani did not accuse Griffin of dodging taxes or violating any statute. His sole aim was to turn the successful businessman into a symbol of everything “wrong” with the system, and to teach Americans to hate success so much that surrendering their own agency to a nanny-state government starts to feel like virtue.
As I continue my Walk Across America, I have watched this story with anger, but not surprise. We have seen this kind of politics before. A politician finds a wealthy man, turns him into a villain, and uses him as a prop to stir up resentment. Mamdani did exactly that when he stood outside Griffin’s $238 million penthouse on Tax Day and called for a new tax on luxury second homes owned by nonresidents.
Griffin was not singled out because he broke any law. He was singled out because he succeeded too visibly. Mamdani, the overprivileged child of millionaires with very little real achievement of his own, looked at a man who climbed to the top of American capitalism and decided the best way to build his own brand was to point at him and say, “There is your enemy.” That may play well as socialist theater, but it is poisonous leadership…