‘Have You Nothing To Say?’ LA Mayor Ignores Questions While Ripped Over Africa Trip

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) refused to respond to a reporter’s questions on whether she regrets traveling to West Africa amid intensifying extreme weather warnings in her city, which ultimately led to the most destructive wildfire in LA’s history.

Bass stayed tight-lipped for nearly two minutes while being confronted by a Sky News reporter about her recent trip to Ghana after landing at an airport Wednesday, video posted by reporter David Blevins shows.

“Madam mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today who are dealing with this disaster?” Blevins asks in the video. “No apology for them?”

“Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?” he continues.

Blevins also asked her about reports that she cut the city’s Fire Department annual budget by millions of dollars. Though copies of the 2024-2025 budget published online show a drop in funds compared to the year before, Politico reported that the LAFD was later given additional funding, which raised the department’s annual budget by more than $50 million compared to the year before.

Jake Flynn, communications director for Councilmember Bob Blumenfield who chairs the city’s Budget and Finance Committee, confirmed that detail to HuffPost Thursday.

“At the time the Budget was adopted, the City was still negotiating [an agreement] with UFLAC (the firefighters’ union),” he said in an email. “It is standard City budgeting practice that, while negotiations are pending, the anticipated salary costs are not included in the departmental budget, but placed in the Unappropriated Balance (UB).”

Bass returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon after attending the inauguration of Ghana’s president on Tuesday. She was part of a four-person delegation sent on President Joe Biden’s behalf.

While abroad, Bass first warned residents Monday of “an expected destructive and potentially life-threatening windstorm” that would hit the LA area on Tuesday. The following day, the same day the area’s largest Pacific Palisades Wildfire started, she declared a local state of emergency.

But her critics have argued that there were ample warnings about the fires in the days before she left for her trip.

Late last week, the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office warned of “extreme fire weather conditions” from Tuesday through Thursday.

Those warnings intensified over the next few days, with the National Weather Service on Monday warning of a “life-threatening, destructive, widespread windstorm” across much of Ventura and LA counties.