For years, Donald Trump has been at odds with ABC News and frequently accuses the network of being “unfair” and “dishonest.” He has also demanded that Disney CEO Bob Iger fire everybody who works there. Despite those accusations, he continues to interview with veteran reporters like George Stephanopoulos and Terry Moran.
It was this interview with Terry Moran that was the beginning of the end. Mr. Moran got the exclusive interview with Mr. Trump to discuss his first one hundred days in office during his second term. That interview led to a brutal tweet from Mr. Moran, which in turn led to his suspension and ultimate firing from ABC.
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Just after midnight on June 8, Mr. Moran sent out a tweet calling Donald Trump and his Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, “world-class haters” and that Trump’s “spiritual nourishment” is “his own glorification.
“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. 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. Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”
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The tweet was not up long before it was deleted, but it was up long enough for multiple news outlets to pick it up and report on what Mr. Moran said. And it was just one day after that tweet that ABC News announced that it had suspended Mr. Moran, pending an internal investigation. Mr. Moran had been with ABC for almost 30 years, starting as the network’s Chief White House Correspondent and moving through the ranks, becoming the Senior National Correspondent in 2018.
Just a few days after Mr. Moran was suspended, ABC said that it had fired the veteran journalist. In a statement, ABC News said that it “stands for objectivity and impartiality,” and that Mr. Moran’s tweet violated those standards.
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Despite the fact that his tweet about Donald Trump and Stephen Miller ended his tenured career, Mr. Moran says that he does not regret what he said.
In an interview with Tim Miller at The Bulwark, Mr. Moran said that just because he is a journalist doesn’t mean he has to “sacrifice his citizenship.”
“You don’t sacrifice your citizenship as a journalist, and your job is not to be objective. There is no Mount Olympus of objectivity where a Mandarin class of wise people have no feelings about their society. We’re all in this together. What you have to be is fair and accurate, and I would refer to the interview with the president that I did, or a lot of my work. And I would also say that this, while very hot, is an observation, a description that was accurate and true.”
“I’m old enough to remember and, you know, get practical things done that people need in a decent way, and stand up for what’s right. And that is my politics. So someone like Stephen Miller, in my judgment, and in my observation, which is what reporters do, is degrading all that and is a danger, and that is what was in my heart.”
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Mr. Moran also admitted that he purposefully used harsh language in his tweet.
“You see him all the time, spitting venom and lies, degrading our public discourse, debasing it, and using the power of the White House and what he’s been given to grind us down…That is very disturbing to me.”
Moran did admit that ABC and Disney have been under increased scrutiny with the Trump administration and have to walk a fine line. Recently, the network settled a defamation lawsuit brought against ABC by Mr. Trump. In March 2024, longtime anchor George Stephanopoulos said the President had been found “liable for rape,” when he had in fact been found liable for sexual abuse, which are two different things under New York law.
In a surprising last-minute decision, Bob Iger decided to settle the lawsuit, agreeing to pay $15 million toward Mr. Trump’s presidential fund and $1 million for his legal fees. However, Mr. Stephanopoulos was not fired, and his contract with ABC was renewed just days later.
Mr. Moran also admitted that he was not worried about the settlement at first, but that he should have been.
Shortly after his termination, Mr. Moran let his followers on X (formerly Twitter) know that he had joined Substack and would continue speaking the truth and reporting on important issues.
Do you think that ABC was right to fire Mr. Moran for his deleted tweet? Is Mr. Moran correct in saying that journalists don’t lose their agency simply because they work for a news network? Was it hypocritical of ABC to fire Mr. Moran while renewing Mr. Stephanopoulos’s contract? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
The post Fired ABC News Journalist Defends Anti-Trump Tweet, “Accurate and True” appeared first on Inside the Magic.
