CNN — not Fox News, not Newsmax, not some right-wing blog — actually pressed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on her spectacularly broken promise to end street homelessness by 2026. It's 2026 now, and Bass sat there on camera stammering about "bureaucratic barriers" while 43,695 people remain homeless in the city she runs. When you've lost CNN, the jig is officially up.
Somebody check the weather in hell, because it must be freezing down there.
WLT Report highlighted the CNN segment where anchor Elex Michaelson interviewed Bass at the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus — a former hospital being converted into a facility for mental health, addiction treatment, and housing. Sounds nice on paper. But Michaelson wasn't there for the ribbon-cutting photo op. He came with receipts.
Michaelson pointed out that homelessness has only declined about 17.6% under Bass — not the 100% she promised when she took office in 2023. "Why should people trust you?" he asked. That's CNN asking a Democrat mayor why anyone should believe a word she says. I need a moment.
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Bass's answer? She blamed "bureaucratic barriers" she supposedly didn't anticipate. She's the mayor of the second-largest city in America, and she didn't anticipate bureaucracy. That's like a ship captain not anticipating water.
But wait, it gets better. Bass's signature Inside Safe program has spent $400 million to house roughly 1,500 people. For those of you keeping score at home, that's over $250,000 per person. And critics say nearly half of those people ended up right back on the streets. So the city spent a quarter of a million dollars per head to temporarily relocate homeless people, and half of them boomeranged right back to the tent cities.
Bass tried to pivot, saying the city had been too focused on building housing and ignoring street homelessness. "We need to end the failed policies of the past, which is, 'All we're going to do is focus on building, and we are going to ignore street homelessness,'" she said. Ma'am, you ARE the failed policies of the past. You've been mayor for over two years.
The numbers are absolutely staggering. Nearly 27,000 people are living on the streets of Los Angeles right now. Bass's proposed budget for 2026-2027 includes $700 million to address homelessness — with about $104 million continuing to fund the Inside Safe money pit — out of a total $14.8 billion spending plan. Billions in, tent cities out.
And now Spencer Pratt — yes, that Spencer Pratt — is running to unseat her. When a reality TV personality looks like a more credible alternative than the sitting mayor, you know the wheels have come completely off.
CNN did the journalism. That's how bad things are in Los Angeles. When the network that spent four years calling everything Trump did a constitutional crisis finally turns around and asks a Democrat, "Why should people trust you?" — well, Karen, maybe it's because they shouldn't.
