New York City just elected a mayor who wants to nationalize your grocery store.
Ron DeSantis went on Fox News and called it exactly what it is.
And if you know anyone in New York who's been thinking about leaving – they just made up their mind.
The Word DeSantis Used That Obama Didn't Want Said Out Loud
Barack Obama went on television and told America that Zohran Mamdani "just wants to help people afford housing."
DeSantis wasn't buying it for a second.
"I saw your clip with Barack Obama saying, 'Oh, Mamdani, all he wants to do is help people afford housing,'" DeSantis told Sean Hannity Wednesday night. "Well, Sean, if that's the case, why did he propose earlier this year the biggest property tax increase in the history of New York City?"
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2052201491943858469?s=20
Then DeSantis said the word Obama and every Democrat defending Mamdani refused to use.
Marxist.
"He's out to push a Marxist agenda," DeSantis said flatly.
He didn't walk it back.
He said it because the evidence backs it up – and he laid that evidence out one item at a time.
Rent freezes.
Government-owned grocery stores.
Free transit for 8 million people.
A 9.5% property tax hike – the largest in city history – landing on cops, nurses, firefighters, and every working family that owns a home in the five boroughs.
That's not a housing plan.
That's a government takeover dressed up in housing language.
Florida Didn't Steal Your Neighbors – New York Chased Them Out
DeSantis didn't just go after Mamdani's policies.
He went after the Democrats who keep voting for them.
"If you wanted to give realtor of the year, I wouldn't pick anybody in Florida," he told the New York Post. "I would pick mayors in New York, in Chicago – they're basically the best ambassadors for Florida that we could ever ask for."
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2052202776533315991?s=20
He's been watching the numbers for years.
During and after the pandemic, New York bled residents into Florida at a pace nobody had seen in decades.
South Florida got the first wave – Manhattan professionals dropping into Miami and Boca Raton.
Then came the outer borough migration.
Staten Island families, Brooklyn tradesmen, Queens small business owners – they pushed into St. Johns County in Northeast Florida, into Naples, into towns that didn't know what a real bagel was five years ago.
DeSantis put the mechanism plainly: "They're taxing you not because they're trying to make their city a better place. They're taxing you because it's part of an ideological agenda. They will waste that money like they have for years."
New York City's budget is already larger than Florida's entire state budget.
Florida still has zero state income tax.
And now Mamdani wants to layer a 9.5% property tax hike on top of everything New Yorkers are already paying.
The Pattern New Yorkers Keep Refusing to See
Here's what should keep every New Yorker up at night.
They've tried this before.
Progressive mayors have run New York for years on the same ideological framework Mamdani is now promising to accelerate – and the results are sitting right there in plain sight.
The subway still doesn't work.
Small businesses on every block shuttered.
And voters looked at that record and elected someone further left.
https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/2052422783406146029?s=20
DeSantis saw it clearly: "They responded to all those problems, not by correcting the problems, but electing somebody who was exacerbating the problems."
That's not a Republican talking point.
That's a description of a city that's lost the ability to hold its own leadership accountable.
Mamdani isn't a new idea.
He's the same idea with a younger face and a more aggressive price tag – and New York just handed him the keys.
The people already in Florida know exactly how this ends.
They lived through the first version of it.
Sources:
- Selim Algar, "Let's Go Yankees: Gov. DeSantis Predicts Fresh Influx of New Yorkers Due to Mayor Mamdani's Policies," New York Post, May 7, 2026.
- Sylvia Eze, "He's Out to Push a Marxist Agenda: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Takes Aim at Zohran Mamdani During Fox News Interview," May 7, 2026.
- Ron DeSantis interview with Sean Hannity, Fox News, May 7, 2026.
