WATCH: CNN Host Torches ‘Out Of Control’ Blue Cities In Brutal Takedown

CNN host Fareed Zakaria tore into New York City and Los Angeles on Sunday, arguing the two Democratic strongholds keep spending more while getting less in return.

His comments came as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, pushed a proposed $127 billion city budget that has already drawn heat, including from a Washington Post editorial board. Zakaria lumped New York and Los Angeles together with Chicago, saying the cities are “producing unaffordability” even as their leaders campaign on affordability.

“New York is really a prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront. Blue cities are out of control. Promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future day. Take Los Angeles, another one-party metropolis wrestling with affordability and disorder,” Zakaria said. “The city’s homelessness budget for fiscal year 2025-‘26 totals about $950 million. The L.A. Homelessness Services Authority reported that in 2023, homelessness was up 9 percent countywide and 10 percent in the city. And a 2024 AP account noted that homelessness has surged 70 percent countywide since 2015, and 80 percent in the city.”

Zakaria said voters are fed up because the results do not match the price tag.

“All this amid public frustration despite billions spent. An audit reviewed 2.4 billion in city homelessness funding and found that officials could not reliably track where it went or what it achieved,” Zakaria said. “Or take Chicago, with a mayor whose approval rating is deep underwater, where the pension promises are so large that they will surely bankrupt the city at some point.”

California’s homeless population has climbed sharply since 2015, even as billions in federal housing funding flowed to major cities, including Los Angeles. In New York, Mamdani drew criticism after announcing an end to sweeps of homeless encampments in the city. During a January cold snap, 20 people froze to death.

Mamdani’s budget plan includes a 9.5% property tax increase as the city stares down a $5.4 billion shortfall. The gap widened after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, rejected Mamdani’s request to raise taxes on wealthy residents and corporations.

Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day.

Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work.

My take: pic.twitter.com/kwYkA4XEjx

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) February 22, 2026

Zakaria said Mamdani is right to focus on affordability, but wrong on the path.

“Zohran Mamdani’s basic instinct is correct: focus on affordability, especially housing. But not by providing government subsidies,” Zakaria said. “These only seem to have driven up the cost of rent, as subsidies naturally do. The city’s rental assistance spending rose from $263 million in fiscal year 2020 to $1.34 billion in the most recently reported fiscal year. That is a five-times increase in a handful of years, and housing costs only got worse.”

He pointed to a different fix: build more housing and stop treating it like a rare luxury.

“Matt Yglesias persuasively argues that the city should make it easy and routine to just build abundant market-rate housing,” Zakaria continued. “That will bring in more people, expand the tax base, fill the schools and increase local GDP. And that will make the budget affordable.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, another Democrat, has faced her own blowback. She was publicly fact-checked by a reporter during a Friday press conference about pothole repairs. Bass also drew criticism for spending more than $1 million on a two-stall restroom near Runyon Canyon.

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