In the arena of political commentary, few figures wield sarcasm like a scalpel quite as effectively as Greg Gutfeld. The “King of Late Night” and Fox News host has built a career on cutting through political spin with a blend of humor and biting logic. This week, his target was none other than Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and the resulting segment was less of a critique and more of a total dismantling.

The catalyst for Gutfeld’s latest on-air masterclass? A bizarre and unfolding scandal involving Mayor Bass’s absence during the recent, devastating wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles. As homes burned and citizens scrambled for safety, the Mayor was notably missing, having traveled thousands of miles away to Ghana for a presidential inauguration. But it wasn’t just the trip that drew Gutfeld’s ire—it was the Mayor’s subsequent explanation that left the host, and millions of viewers, in disbelief.

The “Investigation” That Baffled the Nation

The core of Gutfeld’s segment focused on a statement that sounds almost like a punchline from a satire site. Upon returning to a city choking on smoke and anger, Mayor Bass announced that she was “investigating” the decision she made to travel to Ghana.

“She wants to know how she ended up thousands of miles away in Africa,” Gutfeld quipped, barely suppressing a laugh. “It seems to me like it’s pretty simple. She hopped on a plane and flew there. Did someone blindfold her, throw her in the back of a trunk, and bing-bang-boom she ended up in Ghana? Nope.”

For Gutfeld, this statement was the ultimate symbol of modern political unaccountability. He painted a picture of a leader so detached from her own actions that she treats her own itinerary as a mystery to be solved by a committee. “It’s like OJ saying we need to find the killer,” Gutfeld joked. “Good luck, Nancy Drew, with this mystery.”

The absurdity of the situation provided fertile ground for Gutfeld’s comedy. He noted that in Los Angeles, blaming your absence on “bad advice” or launching an investigation into your own calendar is par for the course. But for the residents who watched their neighborhoods threatened by flames, the joke didn’t land. They were left wondering why their leader was overseas while the city faced one of its most severe crises in years—especially after cutting the fire department’s budget by millions, a point Gutfeld hammered home with precision.

Disconnect from Reality

Beyond the Ghana debacle, Gutfeld used the segment to conduct a broader autopsy of Bass’s tenure as Mayor. He argued that her leadership style is defined by a “magical” ability to ignore reality in favor of optics.

“She keeps promising to make LA a city of the future,” Gutfeld noted. “But no one expected that future to look like a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film directed by whoever made Mad Max.”

He pointed to the glaring contradiction between the Mayor’s press releases and the lived experience of Angelenos. While Bass touts a “1% reduction” in homelessness as a victory, residents are dealing with catalytic converter thefts, rising crime, and encampments that seem to shift rather than disappear. Gutfeld described this as “Bass-level logic,” where renaming a problem is considered the same as solving it.

“It’s like watching someone proudly claim they’ve solved world hunger by simply renaming it food insecurity,” he said.

This disconnect is perhaps most visible in the city’s approach to crime. Gutfeld highlighted the irony of Bass claiming the city is safer while the LAPD’s own crime reports suggest otherwise. He joked that sanitation workers are sending “postcards from the trenches” and that the only thing moving fast in Los Angeles these days is the exodus of residents heading to Texas.

The “Hoax” That Went Viral

Gutfeld didn’t stop at general mismanagement; he zeroed in on a specific incident that he claims exposes the dangerous consequences of Bass’s political narrative. He brought up a story Mayor Bass had amplified regarding a migrant mother allegedly kidnapped by ICE agents and held in a warehouse. Bass had used the story to criticize federal immigration enforcement, stating, “This doesn’t make anyone safer.”

There was just one problem, according to Gutfeld: the story was a hoax. The Department of Justice later revealed that the “victim,” a Mexican national, is now facing federal charges for faking her own kidnapping.

“The story is a hoax,” Gutfeld declared. “But Karen Bass claimed she heard about it from her boyfriend in Chicago.”

For Gutfeld, this was a prime example of “politics on repeat.” He accused the Mayor of being so eager to push a specific narrative about victimhood and federal overreach that she bypassed basic fact-checking. It was, in his view, a perfect microcosm of her administration: high on moral outrage, low on factual accuracy.

Optimism vs. Results

Throughout the segment, Gutfeld returned to a central theme: the weaponization of optimism. He observed that Karen Bass possesses the “political calm of a yoga instructor,” smiling through scandals and delivering speeches that sound like they were written by an AI trained on positivity.

“You can’t fight fire with platitudes, pronouns, and politics,” Gutfeld warned, his tone shifting from mockery to genuine warning. “You need practical solutions.”

He pointed out that while the city spends millions on consultants and studies—or as he put it, “paying someone six figures to write a report that basically says we should do something”—the basic infrastructure of the city is crumbling. He joked that LA doesn’t need another task force; it needs a functioning task.

The critique resonated because it touched on a frustration felt by many in major cities: the feeling that their leaders are managing a brand rather than a municipality. Gutfeld argued that Bass treats every bad headline like a “stubborn stain” that just needs more spinning, rather than a problem that needs fixing.

The Verdict

By the time the segment wrapped up, Gutfeld had effectively turned the Mayor’s “investigation” into a national punchline. But beneath the laughter and the applause of the studio audience, there was a serious message.

Gutfeld’s “roast” was a condemnation of a political class that seems immune to consequence. Whether it’s flying to a gala while the city burns, or claiming victory over homelessness while tents line the boulevards, he argued that leaders like Bass are surviving on “money and faith”—taxpayer money and the blind faith that voters won’t notice the decline.

“Everybody there thinks you’re a full-blown idiot who should resign,” Gutfeld concluded, dropping the humor for a moment of blunt force. “I do think you’re going to see rage in the next couple of years.”

As clips of the segment circulate online, racking up millions of views, it’s clear that Gutfeld struck a nerve. In a world of carefully curated political statements, his unfiltered takedown felt, to many, like a breath of fresh air—even if that air was thick with the smoke of a city in crisis. Mayor Bass may be investigating her trip, but after this segment, the court of public opinion might have already reached a verdict.