For months, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s opponents have looked for ways to knock him down a peg. They tried calling him an antisemite. They tried calling him weak on crime. Now, thanks to a 70-second video, they think they have something. The rich are threatening to move out of the city (for real this time, they mean it), and they have a single frame as explanation: a close-up of Mamdani standing at night in front of the $238 million penthouse of Ken Griffin — the Republican megadonor and billionaire CEO of the hedge fund Citadel — name-checking Griffin, tapping the camera, and promising to “tax the rich.”

The image is from a video Mamdani released on Tax Day. The post had all of the zip we have come to expect from the mayor’s social media; it featured quick cuts, a snappy monologue. Mamdani was announcing a new proposal by Governor Kathy Hochul to tax luxury second homes — typically apartments non–New Yorkers use for weekends or as tax havens. The money would provide funds to fill a budget deficit getting in the way of the mayor’s core campaign promises. The video should have been a celebration of a win. But tens of millions of views on social media later, Mamdani’s political opponents (including a decent-size swath of New York’s business leaders) think they finally have proof that the mayor is every bit the reckless socialist they suspected him to be.

“This has gone from creepy to frightening,” Griffin said at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills after the video was released. A leftist had come to his home. He saw it as a threat. Griffin told the audience Mamdani had put him in mind of Brian Thompson, the late CEO of UnitedHealthcare. It had reminded him of the attempts to assassinate President Donald Trump.

“It was just a huge mistake,” said one political operative close to the mayor’s team. “He is getting asked about this at every press conference, and now every time a business opens an office somewhere else, people are going to point to this video as the reason. The anti-Mamdani people are obsessed with antisemitism, but he’s not........

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