LA Mayor Karen Bass has had an awful week. Catastrophic wildfires continue to rage across Los Angeles, reporters are asking her tough questions—something she’s not used to—and she and Gov. Gavin Newsom are getting savaged online and in the press for the sheer number of failures at play here.

Although there had been warnings that high winds would soon be hitting, creating extremely hazardous fire conditions, Bass nevertheless decided it would be a good time to head to Ghana for the country’s presidential inauguration, as if somehow that were of primary importance to the residents of LA.

But now the story gets worse, as she is exposed as a hypocrite by a campaign promise made in 2021 when she was running against developer Rick Caruso. I will "not travel internationally" if I win, she vowed.

That didn’t age well.

[Bass told the New York Times] …that if she was elected mayor, “not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A…”

When a cascade of deadly and destructive wildfires erupted across the Los Angeles region on Tuesday, the mayor was on her way home from Ghana in West Africa, where she had attended the inauguration of a new president.

I would not travel internationally.
-@MayorOfLA @KarenBassLA, Oct 2021 https://t.co/crBuo8VVgH

— WhatsInAName? (@OopsITweeted) January 13, 2025

It gets worse—it wasn’t even her first time abroad since she took office. Breaking that promise much, Karen?

It was not her first trip abroad as mayor. A review of her public daily schedule for the past year shows that Ms. Bass has traveled out of the country at city expense at least four other times in recent months before the Ghana visit — once to Mexico for the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and three times to France for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Oops.

She picked the wrong week to be incompetent:

Nearly 100k People Slap Karen Bass With Petition to Resign As Even a Kardashian Rips Her As a ‘Joke’

Leaked Memo: Bass Demanded LA Fire Department Cut EXTRA $49 Million Week Before Wildfires Exploded

As my colleague Bonchie reported, it’s not the first time her past statements have come back to haunt her during this tragedy:

Oh boy. Here’s Karen Bass going after Ted Cruz, who was not a state official and had zero role in the response to the 2021 Texas ice storm.

Meanwhile, Bass used taxpayer money to fly to Africa for a pointless photo-op while her city burned. pic.twitter.com/MDnZEo1xVm

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 9, 2025

Perhaps we can forgive the embattled mayor for going to the Olympics overseas—after all, the summer games are scheduled here in 2028, and you could argue that she was preparing for them. But going to Ghana despite the warnings of potential danger? I have nothing against that country, but as a resident of Los Angeles, I can tell you that I’m not particularly interested in their presidential inauguration as our city burns to the ground.

As to her promise not to go abroad, even the leftist New York Times is forced to admit, “That pledge has been spectacularly broken.” Indeed, it has.