Though the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires are, fortunately, extinguished, the devastation left behind by the blazes that took nearly a month to contain has been heartbreaking to witness, with 29 lives lost, entire communities wiped out, and a rebuilding process that is expected to take years and billions of dollars.
Amid what seemed at the time like daily reports of new fires breaking out, LA Mayor Karen Bass (D), found herself facing a different kind of heat – from fed-up residents, from the normally Democrat-compliant press, and from President Donald Trump himself, who visited the area and put Bass and her fellow Democrat leaders on blast to their faces.
“Well, you did something, Brad, where every insurance company in the country left California,” Trump said to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) during a roundtable on live TV that included Bass. “That’s why you have no insurance – because you made it so impossible. People that think like you made it so impossible.”
One big thing Bass was heavily criticized for was taking a trip to Ghana on behalf of then-President Joe Biden as the fires began to rage. She made matters worse for herself by holding a scripted presser soon after returning, in which she embarrassingly read off the letters “U R L” instead of the website address people could use to get more information about the wildfires.
Recently, Bass sat down for an interview with Fox Los Angeles where questions were asked about that trip and if she regretted it. Though she admitted it was a mistake, she claimed in so many words that she didn’t receive any warnings about the wildfires ahead of time: