Media hit for 'sophomoric and ridiculous' take on Biden's travel ban after calling Trump's restrictions racist

President Biden imposed a travel ban on several African countries in the wake of the new strain of the coronavirus, the omicron variant, despite calling his predecessor "racist" and  "xenophobic" for imposing his own travel restrictions - a flashback the media has largely ignored. 

In 2017, then-President Trump imposed travel restrictions on six predominantly Muslim countries over concerns of improper vetting. Liberal media often referred to it as the "Muslim ban." When Covid began spreading throughout the world at the beginning of 2020, Trump would then block travel from China and six other countries, including Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. Biden, a presidential candidate at the time, suggested Trump's actions were "xenophobic."

"We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus," Biden tweeted the day after Trump imposed travel restrictions from China into the U.S. "We need to lead the way with science - not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency."

Biden also referred to Trump's temporary ban on African countries as a "disgrace."

But now as president, Biden appears to be taking a similar course. The first cases of the omicron variant are expected to have originated in southern Africa. Biden announced on Friday that the U.S. would be restricting travel from South Africa, and seven other countries, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. The ban began on Monday. 

At the time of Trump's travel ban announcement, the media had a meltdown of sorts and suggested it was a racist move. But the tone of this week's headlines suggest they're more understanding of Biden's travel bans.

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Juxtaposed CNN pieces on the dueling travel bans showed that the network was much kinder to Biden's more recent restrictions.

The New York Times Opinion page ran a piece titled, "The Racism at the Heart of Trump's ‘Travel Ban'" in February 2020. But this week, the newspaper ran a tamer title, "United States will bar travelers from 8 countries."

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Fox News contributor Joe Concha tried to put his finger on why the press is OK with Biden's ban.

"Because Joe Biden’s ban comes from good, decent place in an effort to save lives, while Trump just did it as an excuse to ban people from coming here," Concha told Fox News Digital. "As utterly sophomoric and ridiculous as those arguments are in applying motive, there are actually enough viewers and readers out there willing to believe it."

Biden is "replicating what he himself called racist," "Unfiltered" host Dan Bongino said on Saturday while sounding off on media hypocrisy. 

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones also wondered where the outraged headlines were.

"The legacy media never disappoint," the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor told Fox News Digital. "They continue to embrace their role as public relations staff for the Biden administration. The omicron variant has been identified in at least a dozen countries so far. Nearly all of those weren't included in Biden's list of nations where he blocked travel. The key reason South Africa was blocked is it actually identified the virus. Yet, the press refused to call out Biden in any similar way to what they did to President Donald Trump."

"Leftist journalists continue to obey my rule of media coverage: Everything left is right and everything right is wrong," he concluded.

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At her Monday press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed Biden was critical of Trump’s "xenophobic tweet" and not critical of the travel restrictions themselves. Media observers pushed back on that explanation.

Fox News' Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.