MSNBC: L.A. Mayor Bass Pledged Not to Travel Internationally if Elected, Was Warned of a Real Fire Danger and Went Overseas Anyway

SCARBOROUGH: “But also, local L.A. officials coming under fire from all sides. ‘The New York Times’ this morning reporting in their lead story, mounting criticism of Bass threatens grip on leadership, talking about the mayor and it writes, ‘The mayor told ‘The Times’ that if she was elected mayor, not only would I of course live here, but I would also not travel internationally. The only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York in relation to L.A..’ And ‘The Times’ writes, ‘That pledge has been spectacularly broken.’ And then they move, they move over on a 14, um — one second here. They move over and they, they talk about how she left at a time when the warnings for extreme fire emergencies were up. Now, though, ‘The Times writes,’ her decision to leave the country at a time when the National Weather Service was warning of quote, ‘extreme fire weather conditions’ has set off a political crisis for Ms. Bass. And the question that ‘The New York Time’s asks is, will she be able to command the respect and the authority she needs to see Los Angeles through its darkest time?”
LEMIRE: “Yeah, this is mayor Karen Bass. She was in Ghana. She was in West Africa attending the inauguration of the new president there when the fire in the Palisades ignited. And as you mentioned, ‘The Times’ does a good job of chronicling, she’d vowed to not travel overseas. She said — she was open about how much she’d missed that. She was a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, uh, spent a lot of time working on us Africa relations, spent a lot of time overseas, but did make that pledge were she to be elected mayor that she would not travel abroad. And certainly there’s a long history of — of mayors being caught out of place when something does happen. Here in New York, famously New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg was in Bermuda when a major blizzard pounded New York. He was late getting back. He was able to — his plane was able to land the last plane, in fact, to land at LaGuardia. And he was able to oversee the response, but took a lot of heat for not being there during the early hours of the storm. And as noted in this story, it’s not like an earthquake, which of course cannot be predicted in any way, shape or form, but rather the — the weather’s the — the national weather service had warned that these winds did present a real fire danger that she knew that was overseas anyway. Now she’s defended herself saying that, you know, she was in constant contact while in Africa, while on the plane, on the flying back. But certainly there are real questions here, including some of her initial halting responses when she landed. Since then though, she has been holding news conference after news conference and saying that she understands, how upset Los Angelinos are there.”