One year after President Joe Biden left office, The New York Times is out with a deep dive into the disastrous decisions that led millions to flood across the southern border on his watch.
In reality, there are hardly any new revelations in the piece for anyone who has been paying any attention, aside from the tidbit that Biden was reportedly warned by his top advisors that immigration and the border were going to be problems for his administration.
That is why Megyn said the lengthy postmortem confirms “journalism is dead” at the paper of record. And on Monday’s show, she was joined by County Highway editor-at-large Walter Kirn to discuss why the Times finally got around to writing the article.
The Report
In the article headlined “How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration,” reporter Christopher Flavelle explored how “the Democratic president and his top advisers rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to the White House.”
The piece seems designed to blame Biden and his team’s failed immigration and border security policies for what the paper deems the “aggressive tactics” of the Trump administration. Flavelle reported that in the weeks after Biden was elected president in 2020, advisers delivered a warning that “his approach to immigration could prove disastrous.”
In August 2020, several aides apparently wrote a memo cautioning Biden’s inner circle that his promises on the campaign trail “could provoke a spike in border crossings.” Aides described Biden as “having no strong positions on immigration beyond two key areas.” Those areas included resisting anything that resembled Donald Trump’s “remain in Mexico policy” and not sending children back across the border.
As Megyn noted, those admissions leave more questions than answers. “What is amazing about that is, if he had just revoked ‘Remain in Mexico’ and then did try to stop sending children back home to Mexico, it would have been bad, but it wouldn’t have been as bad,” she said. “So, who was responsible for revoking every Trump executive order and for the slew of executive orders that Joe Biden signed when he got into office on day one opening up the border for four years of his presidency? Only in June of 2024 did he start to reverse some of this stuff because the election was coming up.”
The article also addressed the 2024 ‘Bipartisan Border Bill’ that then-candidate Trump openly encouraged Republicans not to support. “The Times treats that as a serious attempt by Team Biden to govern and recover from this issue, but those terrible Republicans stopped it, you know, because Trump wanted the electoral win,” Megyn explained. “They actually treat that like it’s a serious piece of legislation that came from genuinely caring Dems who wanted to address this unfortunate thing that just happened down at the southern border.”
Perhaps most egregiously, the article includes the highly controversial September 2021 photo of border patrol agents on horseback. Some outlets accused the agents of chasing migrants, others declared they were whipping them. Those claims even emanated from the Biden White House, despite the photographer who took the photo denying the reports.
Megyn said the Times attempted to “clean up the description” of the picture a bit, going with “images of border patrol agents on horseback, waving their reins while pushing migrants back.” But she said the intention was clear.
“Of all images that could represent our border problems, they chose that one,” she said. “We know very well what you’re doing, New York Times. You’re once again trying to smear the agents you defamed with this image that you already programmed your leftist, misinformed [readers] to think is an example of abuse.”
‘So Dishonest’
What is missing from the piece, Megyn said, is any semblance of self-awareness. “How they could not include some massive self-flagellation at the top of this about their role in facilitating it, excusing it, ignoring it, and thus allowing it, continues to befuddle me,” she noted. “Was there no one at the Times who said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we’re going to need to acknowledge our role in it.’ I guess not… They’re so dishonest.”
She said the piece reveals the “disrespect” the paper has for its readers. “The nerve to pretend this is new information… If you are just right-adjacent… you probably knew all these facts that they’re offering about the number of illegals who flew in, about how everything Biden did made it even easier for them, how he was taken advantage of at every turn, how they game the system. I mean, they’re talking about when [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott sent the illegals up to New York City like, ‘Oh my god, we have news for you,'” she added. “No, we know all of that. We lived it… It blew up New York. It blew up social services.”
Kirn said this is the same game The New York Times has played many times before. “They did the same thing with COVID. They’ve done the same thing with Biden’s dementia. They did the same thing with Russia,” he said. “You see, news used to be about getting the story first, and now it’s about being the last one in to tell everybody what’s been obvious to them for years.”
“Give them a couple of months of venting about this, and then they’ll move on to the next crazy thing that you should never have to put up with that they’ll pretend isn’t happening and maybe tell you the truth about in five years,” he continued. “That’s how it works.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kirn by tuning in to episode 1,208 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.