California residents have grown accustomed to watching their beautiful state burn. Year after year, devastating wildfires tear through communities. Lives are lost. Homes disappear. Dreams turn to ash.
But something feels different this time. As flames engulf Los Angeles neighborhoods, destroying over 2,000 structures and forcing 30,000 residents to flee, a peculiar silence echoes through City Hall. The kind of silence that makes you wonder where exactly your tax dollars went.
A new report perfectly captures everything wrong with modern Democratic leadership. It’s a tale of two cities, two crises, and two very different standards for public officials.
Where’s Madam Mayor When LA Burns?
As Los Angeles firefighters battled the worst blazes in recent memory on January 8, 2025, Mayor Karen Bass was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t coordinating emergency responses. She wasn’t consoling displaced families. She was in Ghana, attending a presidential inauguration.
Five lives have been lost. Thousands of homes and businesses lie in ruins. The city’s emergency services are stretched to breaking point. And their mayor? She was 7,000 miles away, celebrating another politician’s victory.
But here’s where the story takes an ironic turn that would make even Shakespeare chuckle.
The Tweet That Came Back to Haunt
On February 19, 2021, Bass had some choice words for Senator Ted Cruz. When Cruz took his family to Cancun during Texas’s winter storm crisis, Bass tweeted: “Ted Cruz fleeing Texas in the middle of a deadly crisis is part of a larger pattern of the GOP abandoning citizens in crisis. We need to build a movement to kick them all out.”
Oh, the sweet irony. While Cruz was accompanying his children on a pre-planned trip during a crisis he had no direct authority over, Bass was attending an optional foreign celebration while her city, which she directly manages, burned.
Trump Calls Out California’s Crisis
President-elect Donald Trump didn’t miss the opportunity to point out this glaring hypocrisy. Taking to Truth Social on January 9, Trump blamed the wildfires’ devastating spread on “gross incompetence” by both Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom.
Adding insult to injury, Bass’s office demonstrated stunning tone-deafness. On January 8, as thousands fled their burning homes, the Mayor’s official account tweeted about “notable impacts to air quality” – completely ignoring the fact that existing homes were turning to ash.
As Angelenos start their Wednesday morning, there will be notable impacts to air quality with winds pushing smoke across the Los Angeles area.
Please limit your exposure by remaining indoors with windows and doors closed and wearing a properly fit mask. https://t.co/KG6UMYNoZb pic.twitter.com/UyuTEyBuXT
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) January 8, 2025
A Legacy of Failed Leadership
The numbers paint a devastating picture. Official reports confirm 2,124 structures destroyed. 30,000 citizens displaced. Five precious lives lost. And where was the leadership? Somewhere between Ghana and a whole lot of explaining to do.
When Bass finally returned on January 10 and was confronted by reporters about her absence, she chose silence. The same mayor who had plenty to say about Ted Cruz suddenly couldn’t find her voice when faced with her own leadership failures.
Even more concerning? In June 2024, Bass slashed the city’s Fire Department budget by $25 million, despite explicit warnings from Fire Chief Johnson about the dangers of such cuts. Now, as firefighters struggle with limited resources, those budget decisions look increasingly catastrophic.
Key Takeaways:
• Democrat Mayor abandons LA during deadly fires after criticizing GOP for the same behavior.
• While 30,000 citizens fled their homes, Bass attended a foreign celebration.
• Trump calls out leadership failure as firefighters struggle with slashed budgets.
• The mayor’s office tweets about “building housing” while existing homes burn to the ground.
• Previous $25M fire department budget cuts left the city vulnerable to disaster.
Sources: The Post Millennial, Fox News
