Seattle's Socialist Mayor Is Killing The Economy — 91% Of Businesses Have Already Checked Out

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are like super overblown and if you know the ones that leave like bye.

[00:00:08]>> But now one in four employers are actively considering moving. That's a >> early this afternoon. I requested an interview. Her staff gave the impression it would happen after the meeting this evening. Well, that didn't after I asked the mayor directly in person.

[00:00:22]>> Employers are actively considering moving and relocating from Washington state. Well, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz called out Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson in an opinion piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. In the op-ed te titled Seattle Turns Hostile to the great businesses it made, Schultz criticized the city's relationship with corporations, saying Mayor Wilson quote has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. Katie Wilson promised Seattle a revolution, but what she's delivering right now is a mayor who won't answer basic questions, a business community that is packing its bags, and a state business association that just called Washington's economy a five alarm fire.

[00:01:09]Seattle, we're about to connect some very expensive dots. Let's get into it.

[00:01:12]So, we've been doing a lot of videos on Katie Wilson as of late. We talked about the Starbucks boycott that helped push 2,000 jobs to Nashville, the shooting at her own event where her staff cut off a reporter midquest. But today, we're going to add a third layer. Because while Wilson has been dodging cameras and telling millionaires goodbye, the Association of Washington Business just released a survey that should be a wake-up call for every voter in Seattle.

[00:01:37]One in four businesses in Washington state are actively considering leaving.

[00:01:41]The president of the Association of Washington Businesses called this a medical emergency, and Katie Wilson is still not answering questions.

[00:01:48]>> Early this afternoon, I requested an interview. Her staff gave the impression it would happen after the meeting this evening. Well, that didn't after I asked the mayor directly in person.

[00:01:59]>> It was after this meeting we tried asking Mayor Wilson about transparency in her office, and she declined after a spokesperson told us hours earlier she should have time after the forum. This follows days of national headlines questioning city leadership after multiple appearances. Most recently when a staffer cut off an interview between KOMO reporter Chris Daniels and the mayor about public safety.

[00:02:20]>> We see this pattern here. It's a documented deliberate strategy on how they're going to handle the press, which is very interesting because she does consider herself a socialist. Strike one happened when reporter Chris Daniels asks Wilson about the gun violence in the surveillance cameras after a shooting at her own event. Her staff physically cuts off the interview on camera. her communication contact. Sage never returns the calls for an entire week. Strike two. Another reporter, Jackie Kent, requests an interview about transparency. Wilson staff said that she'll have enough time after the town to town hall. She doesn't show. Can't ask her directly in person, face to face. Wilson declines. This is a mayor who has been in office for 4 months and has already established a very clear pattern. If the question is hard, then the answer is silence. If the reporter is persistent, the staff steps in. And if all else fails, just don't show up.

[00:03:07]Now, here's why this matters beyond just the optics. Remember, Katie Wilson ran on transparency. She ran on being different from the political establishment that she said had failed Seattle. And what she has delivered in 4 months is a press operation that just won't return calls. A staff that shuts down interviews on camera and a mayor who looks at a reporter right in the eye at a public town hall and just says, "No, reporters are not going to go away.

[00:03:29]The questions are not going to go away and eventually the receipts are going to catch up with everyone." Real talk, the hardest part of running two YouTube channels isn't the filming. It's not the editing. It's keeping track of everything. I'm doing research calls.

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[00:05:05]>> And what we've seen is what we actually feared, a a collapse in business confidence has continued in our state.

[00:05:11]And what we're seeing now is employers are actively considering moving and relocating from Washington state. So I would say what the data here shows us this should be considered a medical emergency for Washington's economy.

[00:05:22]emergency, a five alarm fire. Those are the words of the president of the Association of Washington Business, a statewide employee organization that just surveyed over 400 businesses across Washington state. And the numbers they came back with are the kind that should be keeping every elected official in the state up at night. One in four businesses actively considering leaving, not thinking about it casually, actively. That number is up seven points in a single quarter. 55% of employers considering moving their personal residence. That's up nine points. 72% naming Washington's tax burden as their number one challenge. Then we get into more details. 59% of individuals actively looking at real estate in other states. 45% have already visit those states. 23% are consulting with lawyers about how to make the move. 7% have already bought a property somewhere else. and 17%, that's nearly one out of five, have already been contacted by out of state economic development organizations, actively recruiting them to leave. And think about that, other states are now showing up in Washington's backyard and saying, "Come to us. We want you. We'll make it worth your while." And 17% of Washington's employers are listening. Now, connect that directly to when Kate Wilson was standing in front of the camera saying bye to anyone who doesn't like her agenda. The AWB president was asked directly about this comment, and this is what he said. I think it's concerning anytime we have elected officials wanting to say goodbye to the job base, goodbye to the tax base of their economy. I think we should be saying thank you. You're wanted here. You You create great jobs. You create pathways for young people. You make investments in your local community. You're part of the fabric of your local regions that you call home. You sponsor little league teams. You you are so ingrained in local communities. And so I say on behalf of the employer committee of our state, thank you. You're wanted. Notice how the AW president answered that question. He didn't attack Katie Wilson personally.

[00:07:13]He didn't get partisan about it. He just described the situation plainly, calmly what the businesses leaving Washington are actually dealing with. These businesses sponsor little league teams.

[00:07:22]They create pathways for young people.

[00:07:24]They create investments in local communities. They are ingrained in the fabric of the places they call home.

[00:07:29]These are not just some faceless hedge funds operating offshore. These are businesses built in Washington state employing Washington workers, paying Washington taxes, coaching Washington kids on Saturday mornings. And the mayor looked into the camera and said bye to them. Now, here's the economic math that Wilson either doesn't understand or doesn't even care about. The AWB president said even if 2% of those employees actually leave, then what is the impact? He calls it a real concern.

[00:07:54]The Seattle University economics professor in the same broadcast said that if 5 to 10% leave, people will notice this for sure. Employees will lose their jobs, customers will have fewer options, and the governments would collect less tax revenue. That's the direct line between saying bye to the millionaires and the fentanyl epidemic in the dog park or the small business owner that can't get a police response or that $35 billion shortfall facing the Sound Transit voter approved light rail expansion. You cannot fund these progressive agendas on just talk and words. You need the money. and Wilson is waving goodbye to that money from the people who provide it. Does that make any sense?

[00:08:33]>> I personally don't think that we're going to see a huge impact, but you know, that's only my guess.

[00:08:41]>> On the other hand, government has to uh pay attention to the business climate of the state. Uh because you not only want it to be a positive climate, but you also want a positive story about your business climate. and I'm not sure that's happening at the moment.

[00:08:58]>> So, we're not listening to a Republican, you know, conservative think tank, strategist, whatever. This is a economics professor and this person obviously is going to try to have a a balanced counterpoint to AWB's alarm bells, but even he cannot put a positive spin on this. Now, here's the number that the professor's answer is dancing around 9%. We're seeing other states now say, "We want you to come to our state and and move your business and move your residents." And then any optimism in the economy about expanding has dropped. Now only 9% of respondents say they plan to expand a Washington's economy. So it is real. The movement of people, both individuals and their businesses, is real. It's happening. It's happening every day right now. It's gone beyond anecdotal.

[00:09:42]>> Only 9% of Washington businesses plan to expand in the state. not leave, expand, just grow where they already are, 9%.

[00:09:51]When less than one out of 10 businesses believe the environment is good enough to invest more in, that is not a rough quarter. That is a crisis of confidence that builds upon itself. Businesses that don't expand don't hire. Businesses that don't hire don't pay more taxes.

[00:10:05]Governments that collect less taxes will have to cut services. And the people who need those services, the ones Katie Wilson said that she was governing for protecting, are the ones left holding the bag. So, while she's out there dodging reporters and telling millionaires goodbye, the gap between what she promised and what she's delivering isn't just a policy disagreement. It's governing failure happening right now in real time.

[00:10:28]>> I think we have to stop the pain and the infliction that we're doing on the economy and the psyche of the economy.

[00:10:33]And we need to get to a what does a growth agenda look like? What does a pro- jobs agenda look like? We need to create more jobs for Washington's economy. We need to grow our economy.

[00:10:43]This should be a five alarm fire on the Washington's health of our economy and we need an equal commitment to reversing that course.

[00:10:51]>> Talking about that five alarm fire and I want to be really clear about what the five alarm fire means. It means that you don't wait, you don't commission an audit, you don't issue a press statement, you respond with everything you got right now. Katie Wilson's response to the five alarm fire. Well, dodge reporters at the town halls block camera expansion because of ICE for some reason, boycott Starbucks and watch thousands of jobs go to another state and then releasing statements 5 months later talking about strong partnerships with a company that she publicly boycotted. I know many of you probably thinking why a guy from New York City is even talking about this situation here.

[00:11:24]What I'm dealing with is very similar to what's happening in Seattle. It's happening here in New York City. This is a preview of where Seattle is heading if nothing changes. I'm talking about Ken Griffin, the billionaire CEO of Citadel was targeted by my mayor in a tax day video talking about the outside Griffin's uh penthouse promoting this wealth tax. And it looks like it's possible that he's going to halt a $6 billion development project. 20,000 jobs could be gone. What the mayor of New York has made clear to my partners and principally my New York partners, my New York partners, is that we need to double down on our bet in Miami because we want to be in a state that embraces that embraces business, that embraces education, that embraces personal freedom and liberty, and that embraces people having an opportunity to live the American dream. And the mayor's office responding to those comments, saying in part, quote, "Mayor Mimdani wants all New Yorkers to succeed. That includes business owners and entrepreneurs who create good paying jobs and makes the city the economic engine of America." It also includes Ken Griffin, who is a major employer in our city and a powerful figure in our economy.

[00:12:34]>> When it comes to Citadel, Chicago tried it, lost Citadel. Now New York is doing the same thing, and they're going to lose a $6 billion project. And Seattle has a mayor four months in that calls herself a socialist on camera telling the millionaires goodbye and now is hiding from reporters while one out of four businesses in her state plan to leave. As we do more videos on Katie Wilson, we realize the story keeps getting bigger and bigger. Not because we're looking for it, but because we see the issues that's happening in Seattle.

[00:13:00]We see the the Starbucks exodus. We see what's going on with business leaders and employers. Every single point connects to the next issue. Seattle deserves a mayor who understand you cannot fund a city on words alone. You need a tax base. You need businesses that want to grow there. You need workers who feel safe enough to stay and you need a leader that can stand in front of the camera and answer one hard question without her staff stepping in.

[00:13:23]4 months in and the nonsense just keeps piling up. But we continue to follow this story. Let me know what you guys think about this in the situation in the comments below. One more time, big thanks to Plaude for sponsoring this video. If you want to stop losing the details that matters from your phone calls, your meetings, and even your random brainstorm walks, link is in the description. 30-day return policy. Go check it out. Thank you for taking time to watch this video and I see you guys in next