CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria opened his program on Sunday by skewering \u201cblue cities\u201d like Los Angeles and New York for being dysfunctional embarrassments that tax residents an arm and a leg but fail to deliver on a number of issues, from public safety to affordable housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York is really a prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront,\u201d Zakaria said. \u201cBlue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less, and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zakaria ripped NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s proposed 9.5% property tax increase<\/a>, saying it was an unwise move considering how heavily taxed New Yorkers already are.<\/p>\n He gave Mamdani a quick compliment a moment later, saying his \u201cbasic instinct\u201d on housing being unaffordable for middle-class residents is correct. But he said NYC has tackled the problem incorrectly, even before Mamdani became mayor in January; CNN flashed a graphic showing NYC\u2019s rental assistance subsidies have increased fivefold since 2020 from $263 million to $1.34 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cFocus on affordability, especially housing, but not by providing government subsidies,\u201d Zakaria said. \u201cThese only seem to have driven up the cost of rent, as subsidies naturally do.\u201d<\/p>\n He then moved to the West Coast and bashed LA for being \u201canother one-party metropolis.\u201d<\/p>\n Zakaria pointed out LA has poured billions into solving its homeless crisis in recent years \u2014 and has gotten absolutely nothing out of it. Actually, the problem has only grown worse, with Zakaria highlighting an Associated Press report that found LA County\u2019s homeless population surged 70% between 2015 and 2024.<\/p>\n Chicago is yet another blue city blemish for Dems, Zakaria argued. He said the city is run by an unpopular mayor and has no answers for its ballooning pension payments, which will bankrupt the city sooner or later.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is the theory of good government here?\u201d Zakaria asked. \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n His rant against Democrat-run cities caught the attention of President Donald Trump\u2019s social media team, which shared a clip of Zakaria\u2019s opening monologue on X.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Watch above, via Fareed Zakaria GPS.<\/p>\n The post CNN\u2019s Fareed Zakaria Goes Off on \u2018Blue Cities\u2019 Like LA and New York for Being \u2018Out of Control\u2019<\/a> first appeared on Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria opened his program on Sunday by skewering \u201cblue cities\u201d like Los Angeles and New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,59807,59808,59809,9,24,55,54,56,82],"class_list":["post-142212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-affordable-housing","tag-fareed-zakaria","tag-fareed-zakaria-gps","tag-government-subsidies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}