If a Chinese paper wrote a story about how a primary race in Kentucky was the most consequential race for China after pro-China donors poured $35 million in the race
What’s would that mean?
I am the Chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust. Eighty-four years old. Seven buildings in Midtown Manhattan. I said what I said.
I said "tax the rich" is the equivalent of a racial slur. I said it at REBNY. Into the microphone. Eight hundred people. Median net worth in that room was north of $240 million, I know because our CFO ran the guest list through a Bloomberg terminal as a joke, and then it wasn't a joke. And when I said it, twelve people applauded. The rest nodded. One woman in the third row mouthed, "Finally." I saw her.
Sharon, my communications advisor, Columbia, $430,000 a year, very bright, Sharon wants me to walk it back. She drafted something. "Mr. Roth's comments were intended to highlight the emotional impact of political rhetoric on business communities." I read it. I put it in the trash can on my desk. Not the recycling. The trash. Here's my clarification: I understated it.
"Tax the rich" is worse than a slur. A slur is just a word. It doesn't come with a CBO score. Nobody is introducing a bill called the Racial Slur Implementation Act of 2026. But there are seventeen active proposals in Congress, I had Sharon count them, seventeen proposals designed to take more of my money. My money. Mine. Money I acquired by being better at acquiring Manhattan commercial real estate than anyone alive for four consecutive decades. That is not a crime. That is a record.
I pay property taxes on $18.2 billion in assessed assets. $412 million a year. Say it again: four hundred and twelve million. I carry that number. It's the first thing I think about when I see a protest sign. I think: I pay more in property tax than the entire annual budget of the city of Fort Lauderdale. I looked this up. Fort Lauderdale: $408 million. Steve Roth: $412 million. I am a small city. And the city doesn't get screamed at.
My effective tax rate last year was 11.4 percent. I say this because I believe in transparency and because I'm not ashamed of it. The rate reflects the legal structure of real estate investment trusts, depreciation schedules Congress established in 1986, and carried interest provisions that both parties have voted to preserve for forty years. I did not write these laws. I organized my entire financial existence around them with the help of nine full-time tax professionals who have offices on the 38th floor of 888 Seventh Avenue, which I also own. Their office is in my building. Their work protects my buildings. This is not a loophole. Sharon calls it a loophole. I've told her: a structure maintained by nine attorneys across four decades is not a loophole. A loophole is something you slip through once. This is architecture. This is the foundation. This is the building.
Last Tuesday, same as every Tuesday, I walked past 1290 Sixth Avenue. My building. And there was a man. Same man as last week. Same sign: "Billionaires Pay Your Fair Share." He was standing on my sidewalk. My literal sidewalk — my company owns the ground lease. He was maybe thirty. He was wearing a jacket I would estimate cost $60. My lunch that day was $114. For one. I am telling you this not to boast but because these are facts. He has decided I'm his enemy. Based on a number he saw on a Forbes list. He doesn't know what I pay. He doesn't know what my buildings cost this city in construction jobs and lease revenue and foot traffic. He knows one number. He has made one judgment.
I see him every Tuesday. I've started to notice things. He brings coffee from the cart, not the Starbucks. He has a backpack that looks heavy. He doesn't look unhealthy. He looks like he probably works somewhere, but not on Tuesdays. I've wondered: does he have a job? Does he have a building? Does he have anything that depends on him the way 4,200 employees depend on me? I suspect not. And yet he has opinions about my tax rate.
I gave $22 million to charity last year. The Met. NYU Langone. Mount Sinai. I gave a building to NYU. Not money for a building — a building. The Steven Roth Residence Hall. It houses 400 students. That man with the sign has never housed 400 students. He hasn't housed one. He gives cardboard. I give structures. This is not a comparison I'm making to flatter myself. It's just arithmetic.
When I said what I said at REBNY, I was saying what every person in that room believes and none of them will say publicly because they have communications advisors and the communications advisors all went to Columbia and they all say "unhelpful." I'm eighty-four. I'm too old for helpful. I'm too old to perform restraint for people who hate me for something I can't change.
I didn't choose to be rich. I chose to be good at one thing for a very long time, and this is what happened. You don't punish someone for that. You don't legislate against someone for that.
My net worth fluctuates between $3.8 and $4.1 billion depending on the quarter. I fluctuate more in a fiscal week than that man on my sidewalk will earn in his life. Both of these are facts. Only one of them is considered polite to say.
They want me to apologize.
I'll be dead in ten years. Twenty if I'm lucky. And they'll still be renting my buildings.
NEW: Oklahoma high school principal seen charging at and disarming a school shooter in footage obtained by @SHumphreyTV.
Pauls Valley High School Principal Kirk Moore is being called a hero after getting shot while stopping a school shooter.
The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Victor Hawkins, was a former student who said he wanted to shoot up the school “like the Columbine shooters did.”
While taking down the shooter, Moore was shot in the leg. He is expected to recover and says he is looking forward to returning to work as soon as possible.
"I look forward to returning to work as soon as possible so that I may continue my life’s work educating the next generation of Oklahoma leaders. Until then, my thoughts are with our outstanding students, safe today in the arms of their families and friends," he said.
Hero!
I rarely read the filth you publish, and have never responded to it, for the same reason I avoid pornography. It’s unhealthy and I don’t want to encourage it. But in this specific case I understand exactly what you’re doing and I’d like to stop it now. I have never said or suggested that “everyone needs to know where their local Chabad is,” or anything remotely like it. I didn’t attack or even criticize Chabad, an organization I’ve mentioned precisely once in my life. Last week I said I believed that IDF soldiers in Israel have received third temple patches for their uniforms from Chabad. I believe that’s true. Please let me know if I’m wrong, not that you care. The point of your post is to blame me preemptively for violent attacks on American Jews that you believe are coming. This is an absurd slander of course. I abhor violence against innocents, which is why I am disgusted by what Israel has done in Gaza and why I argued against the current war in Iran. As a Christian and an American I also vehemently oppose punishing anyone on the basis of bloodline. The concept of “Amalek” has no place in Western civilization and certainly not in my country. I am therefore strongly opposed to anti-Semitism, precisely as much as I am to the anti-Arab hate you promote or the anti-white bias embedded in the US government and our largest institutions. It’s all immoral and indefensible. I believe in the inherent rights of the individual because I believe in God. What you’re doing divides this country more than you likely understand. I hope you will stop.
Just got the names of the 7 civilians Israel murdered in a school shelter yesterday.
(Please let me know if any Western MSM writes or says their names)
The victims of the Israeli terrorist attack were from two related families, including mothers and fathers:
▪︎ Atef Ahmed Al-Niddir (father)
▪︎ Fatima Al-Najjar (mother)
▪︎ Ahmed Atef Al-Niddir (son, 4 months old)
▪︎ Fawzi Abdullah Al-Niddir (father)
▪︎ Arwa Omar Al-Niddir (mother)
▪︎ Samira Fawzi Al-Niddir (daughter)
▪︎ Sama Fawzi Al-Niddir (daughter)
I’m attaching a photo of the 4-month-old baby, one victim of Israel’s terrorism.
He’s on the floor next to his slaughtered father.