CNN Finally Admits the Truth About Democrat-Run Cities

CNN's Fareed Zakaria went off-script this week — at least by his network's standards — and said the quiet part out loud: Democrat-run cities are a mess, and the politicians in charge either can't or won't do anything about it.

Of course, this isn’t news to you, but for a CNN host to admit this is a big deal.

Zakaria opened with Zohran Mamdani’s New York, calling it "a prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront." That's a pretty remarkable admission from a CNN host, but I assure you, he was just getting started.

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

He then turned to Los Angeles, and the numbers he cited are staggering. Zakaria noted that the city's homelessness budget for fiscal year 2025-2026 alone totals roughly $950 million. Not the cumulative total over several years. One year. And what has all that money bought? He explained that the LA Homelessness Services Authority reported that homelessness increased by 9% countywide and 10% within the city in 2023. A 2024 AP account found that homelessness had surged by 70% countywide since 2015 and by 80% within the city.

"All this amid public frustration, despite billions spent," Zakaria said.

Then came perhaps the most damning detail. 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." That's right. $2.4 billion has just disappeared into the bureaucratic ether.

To make matters worse, not only are there never results, but there’s never any accountability either, at least not for the people running the city.

Zakaria moved on to Chicago next. He noted the city has a mayor whose approval rating is "deep underwater" and pension obligations so enormous they will "surely bankrupt the city at some point." That's a pretty frank diagnosis coming from a guy on a network that spent years cheerleading for this very brand of governance.

Then Zakaria asked the key question Democrats never ask: "What is the theory of good government here?" His answer was cutting. "If the answer is keep adding programs, the city will keep producing unaffordability, because unaffordability is what happens when government becomes a machine that grows faster than the society it governs."

Zakaria continued, “Zohran Mamdani's basic instinct is correct: focus on affordability, especially housing, but not by providing government subsidies. These only seem to have driven up the cost of rent, as subsidies naturally do.”

Here’s where Zakaria went wrong. Affordability isn’t an instinct for Mamdani; it’s a talking point. His instinct is to subsidize. It’s not like he wasn’t upfront about this during his campaign.

So all the affordability problems New York City faces are going to get worse under Mamdani. Heck, he’s already gone looking to Gov. Kathy Hochul to bail out New York City — a mere two months into his administration.

That's the pattern. Spend more. Get less. Blame someone else. Repeat.

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