Media lays off Biden sending troops to southern border after blasting Trump for doing the same

NYT, AP, MSNBC panned Trump's troop deployment to the border as a 'political' move

The legacy media has toned down its coverage of President Biden's decision to send troops to the southern border after lambasting former President Trump for doing the same during his administration. 

The Biden administration approved sending 1,500 active duty U.S. troops to the border amid concerns of a migrant surge once the COVID-era Title 42 is lifted in the coming days. 

But when his predecessor made similar moves to clamp down on illegal border crossings, many news organizations deemed it "political."

In October 2018, The New York Times ran the headline "Trump Sending 5,200 Troops to the Border in an Election-Season Response to Migrants," telling readers the decision is an "escalation of a midterm election show of force against a caravan of Central American migrants that President Trump has characterized as an ‘invasion of our country.’"

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION APPROVES SENDING 1,500 US TROOPS TO MEXICO BORDER AS TITLE 42 DEADLINE LOOMS: SOURCES

"The massing of American troops comes as Mr. Trump has seized on the caravan as a closing political message in the final week before the midterms, warning darkly — and without evidence — that ‘Middle Eastern’ people are part of a dangerous mob of migrants threatening to surge into communities here," the Times wrote. "But the caravan, which has shrunk from 7,000 people to less than 3,500, is still weeks away from reaching the United States. The rare use of the active-duty military to bolster Mr. Trump’s campaign message has intensified criticism that the president is using the military for political gain."

On Tuesday, the Times ran the headline "Biden to Send 1,500 Active-Duty Troops to the Southern Border," burying to the seventh paragraph, "The decision to deploy active-duty troops signals rising anxiety within the White House over the political backlash that would come with a surge of illegal crossings after Title 42 ends."

The legacy media is seemingly giving President Biden a pass over sending troops to the southern border and piling on former President Trump for doing the same in 2018. (AP)

The Associated Press ran a similarly bland headline for Biden, but for Trump, its 2018 headline read "Trump sends troops to border, an issue that fires up base."

"The Trump administration is planning to dispatch at least 800 active duty troops to the southern border at the direction of a president who has sought to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in the midterms as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico," the AP began its story, later writing, "Trump, who made fear about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the Nov. 6 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his base of supporters."

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Migrants are expected to flood the southern border after the COVID-era Title 42 is lifted.  (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

The Washington Post offered the mildest criticism of Biden's directive, telling readers, "It is unusual to dispatch active-duty troops on domestic missions." But in November 2018, the paper's left-leaning editorial board declared Trump's troop deployment to the border "a total farce."

"President Trump's order deploying thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, to halt what he characterized as an imminent 'invasion' by so-called caravans of Central American migrants, had its use as pre-electoral political theater. But it is not a laughing matter," the Post editorial board wrote at the time, before sounding the alarm on how taxpayers were "on the hook" for over $200 million. 

OVER 99% OF MIGRANTS WHO HAVE SOUGHT TITLE 42 EXCEPTION VIA CBP ONE APP WERE APPROVED

The editorial board later wrote, "Mr. Trump’s choice to use active-duty troops, and in numbers wildly disproportionate to any conceivable threat, is posturing masquerading as policy… To brandish U.S.  troops under the current circumstances is unlikely to work as deterrence. Now that the elections are finished, maybe this pointless deployment can be ended."

The Washington Post editorial board panned former President Trump's decision to send troops at the southern border as a "total farce" in 2018. (Fox News Digital)

For MSNBC, its anchors offered what can essentially be amounted to a collective shrug to the new troop deployment. The same cannot be said during the Trump administration. 

Ali Velshi sounded the alarm on the "consequences" from Trump's troop deployment and called the $220 million price tag "important" since the president had scrapped military exercises in South Korea that cost $14 million, something Trump referred to as "tremendously expensive." NBC News reporter Julia Ainsley told Velshi that Trump "obviously" sent the troops to the southern border "during the heat of the midterms." 

Rachel Maddow, meanwhile, dedicated a monologue calling out Trump's "political stunt" based on leaked military documents that reportedly estimated only a small percentage of migrants from the large caravan would likely reach the southern border and did not see a criminal or terrorist element among them. 

"So active duty troops are being sent there, apparently in huge numbers on the president's orders right before the election. He's making his biggest show out of it as possible, speech at the White House today and everything. But now we know that the military itself assesses the situation there as nowhere near the kind of terrible immediate existential threat that the president is preaching to the country as supposedly justifying this deployment," Maddow told viewers.

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On Wednesday, "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist made sure to inform viewers the troops Biden is sending "won't be armed," "will not use force," and tossed it to a panelist who called it a "smart move on the part of the Biden administration." 

MSNBC’s morning show turned to former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, now a reliably left-wing voice for the outlet, for his thoughts on how Biden’s decision would play politically. His answer indicated Trump-era troops weren’t so bad after all.

"I think the administration is behind the eight-ball here, I think they’ve been slow to the roll on the immigration questions for the last two and a half years," Steele said. "I think they’ve narratively allowed the Republicans to maintain the narrative that began under the Trump administration, and while people may scoff and moan about the idea of a wall, for a lot of Americans, not just Republicans, it was a sign of at least something. There was some strategy there."