Terry Moran said that his social media post, in which he labeled Donald Trump and his aide Stephen Miller each as a “world class hater,” was not a “drunk tweet” and “something that was in my heart and mind.”
Speaking to the Bulwark’s Tim Miller on Monday, Moran said that “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.”
At 12:06 a.m. on June 8, Moran posted on X, “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 is only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”
He later deleted the post. The network suspended his later that morning, and announced later in the week that they were not renewing his contract, which ended on Friday. Moran, senior national correspondent, had been with the network since 1997.
In a statement, the network said, “We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran and based on his recent post – which was a clear violation of ABC News policies – we have made the decision to not renew. At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”
In his interview with Miller, Moran said of the network’s decision, “I became bad business.” But he didn’t back away or apologize from the post, and has since launched a new Substack.
Trump administration officials had called on the network to take action against Moran, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted excerpts of the then-deleted post.
“Somebody asked he the other day in connection with all this, ‘So what are your politics?’ And I said, well, I guess I’m a Hubert Humphrey Democrat. 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.”
