Zohran Mamdani, the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City, said Sunday that he doesn’t believe billionaires should exist.
Asked directly whether billionaires should have a right to exist, Mamdani, who identifies himself as a democratic socialist, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.”
“And I look forward to working with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fair for all of them,” he added.
His remarks come as some wealthy people in New York City soured on Mamdani in the days after it became clear that he would be the presumptive nominee.
Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has backed President Donald Trump in the past, on Thursday pledged to use his money to bankroll a challenger to Mamdani in the general election.
“[Mamdani’s] policies would be disastrous for NYC. Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country. The ability for NYC to offer services for the poor and needy, let alone the average New Yorker, is entirely dependent on NYC being a business-friendly environment and a place where wealthy residents are willing to spend 183 days and assume the associated tax burden,” Ackman wrote in a post on X.
“Importantly, there are hundreds of million of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds. So, if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in,” he added.
On Sunday, Mamdani also spoke about his plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest people living in the Big Apple, telling “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “Ultimately, the reason I want to increase these taxes on the top 1%, the most profitable corporations, is to increase quality of life for everyone, including those who are going to be taxed.”
He credited his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy as one of the key tenets of his platform that helped him win the primary.
“We’re seeing that our vision to tax the top 1% of New Yorkers — these are New Yorkers who make a million dollars a year or more — and our proposal is to just tax them by 2% additional, is something that has broad support, and we’ll continue to increase that support over the next few months.”
Mamdani has also faced critics — including President Donald Trump — who call him a communist.
“I am not” a communist, Mamdani said on Sunday, in response to a question about Trump’s comments.
On Sunday, in a separate interview on Fox News that was taped Friday, Trump again spoke about Mamdani, making a threat to pull federal funding from New York City if the next mayor doesn’t “do the right thing.”
“But let’s say this: If he does get in, I’m going to be president, and he’s going to have to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money, he’s got to do the right thing,” the president told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
Mamdani added in his response: “I have already had to start to get used to, get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately, because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for, and I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed.”
A key focus of Mamdani’s campaign was speaking about affordability and the economy, a point that he made on “Meet the Press” Sunday when asked about why he thought he won.
“It was the focus on the fact that we live in the most expensive city in the United States of America. It’s also the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet 1 in 4 New Yorkers are living in poverty, and the rest are seemingly trapped in a state of anxiety,” Mamdani said.
He added, “And what we’ve seen is that this is a city that needs to be affordable for the people who build it every day. Our focus was on exactly that, and by keeping that focus on an economic agenda, we showed New Yorkers that this could be more than just a museum of what once was. It could be a living, breathing testament to possibility.”