ABC News has suspended correspondent Terry Moran over his since-deleted post on X criticizing White House Deputy Chief of Policy Stephen Miller.
Moran notably nabbed an interview with President Donald Trump on behalf of ABC News 100 days into Trump’s second term. Early on Sunday, Moran decided to share his personal thoughts on Miller, who has worked in the Trump administration — even during the first term.
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“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller,” Moran wrote. “It’s not brains. It’s bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”
By the time Miller responded to the post, it was deleted from X. However, the message continued to circulate via screenshots of the post.
“The most important fact about Terry’s full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America,” Miller responded on X. “For decades, the privileged anchors and reporters narrating and gatekeeping our society have been radicals adopting a journalist’s pose. Terry pulled off his mask.”
Even Vice President JD Vance offered his reaction to Moran’s words, sharing a screenshot of the since-deleted post. Vance called on ABC to “apologize to Stephen” over the “disgraceful” post.
“An ABC journalist @TerryMoran posted this absolutely vile smear of Stephen Miller. It’s dripping with hatred. Remember that every time you watch ABC’s coverage of the Trump administration,” Vance said. “As it happens, I know Stephen quite well. And he’s motivated by love of country. He’s motivated by a fear that people like Terry Moran make rules that normal Americans have to follow, but well connected people don’t.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures to also respond. Leavitt confirmed that the White House is in contact with ABC News, which is owned by Disney. The network allegedly promised Leavitt “they will be taking action.”
“Well, ABC is going to have to answer for what their, again, so-called journalist put out on Twitter in the wee hours of the night, calling Steven Miller ‘vile,'” Leavitt said. “And this is, again, coming from someone who is supposed to be an unbiased and professional journalist. This is unacceptable and unhinged rhetoric coming from someone who works at a major television network.”
This comes after ABC News host George Stephanopoulos settled with Donald Trump in a lawsuit where his network will pay $15 million for his comment saying Trump was “liable for rape”. In addition to the settlement, ABC News issued a statement of regret at the bottom of an online article that contained the clip of Stephanopoulos’s comment. Trump put the settlement toward establishing a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.”
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“But I think this speaks to the distrust that the American public have in the legacy media, and it’s why in the White House press shop and in President Trump’s White House we have made so many significant and much-needed changes to press access and transparency at the White House,” Leavitt said.
Moran is also not likely to receive another opportunity to interview Trump as his post also claimed that the president is a “world-class hater,” in addition to calling Trump’s hate “a means to an end” because it is his “spiritual nourishment.” In April, Trump explained he only picked Moran to interview him because he had “never heard of” Moran.