ABC News said that it has suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran over a late night X post, since deleted, attacking Trump administration official Stephen Miller as a “world class hater.”
“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” a network spokesperson said. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”
Top Trump administration officials had called out the X post on Sunday morning, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that the network should hold him “accountable” and Vice President JD Vance asking for an apology.
The 12:06 a.m. post called Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, 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.”
Even though the post was already deleted, Leavitt flagged the post on Sunday morning and wrote, “This is unhinged and unacceptable. We have reached out to @ABC to inquire about how they plan to hold Terry accountable.”
Last night, in a since deleted post, so-called “journalist” @TerryMoran went on a rampage against Stephen Miller and called President Trump “a world class hater.”
This is unhinged and unacceptable.
We have reached out to @ABC to inquire about how they plan to hold Terry… pic.twitter.com/HsgusJEIvH
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) June 8, 2025
Miller himself wrote on X on Sunday morning, “The most important fact about Terry’s full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America. 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.”
Vice President JD Vance also weighed in, writing that Moran’s post was a “vile smear of Miller.”
“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,” Vance wrote. “It’s why he fought so hard to get President Trump elected and why he works to hard to implement the agenda. ABC should apologize to Stephen. What Terry posted is disgraceful.”
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.
As it happens, I know Stephen quite well. And he’s motivated by love of country. He’s… pic.twitter.com/hX93zKTWjy
— JD Vance (@JDVance) June 8, 2025
The post appeared on Moran’s account hours after Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to protests over ICE raids in Southern California. Governor Gavin Newsom objected to the deployment as “purposefully inflammatory.”
Moran sat down with Trump for an Oval Office interview in April to mark the president’s first 100 days in office. Trump at times got testy with Moran, as the ABC News correspondent pressed him on his contention that a photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia actually showed him with tattoos of the letters “MS-13.” But those letters had been superimposed on the photos as a way to allege that other symbols on Garcia’s knuckles meant he had the gang affiliation.
Tellingly, the Trump interview was not with ABC News World News Tonight anchor David Muir. Muir, along with Linsey Davis, moderated last September’s presidential debate, and Trump and his allies attacked the network when the duo at times fact checked some of Trump’s claims. A conservative group filed a complaint with the FCC over what they alleged was the network’s “debate bias.”
Good Morning America co-host and This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, was at the center of Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the network. During a March, 2024 interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), Stephanopoulos said that “juries have found” Trump “liable for rape.” In fact, a civil jury found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, although the judge in the case concluded that the jury’s finding “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Nevertheless, as Trump was preparing to return to office, the network settled the case, with a $15 million payment going to the planned Trump Presidential Library and another $1 million in attorneys fees.
Trump has continued to attack the network, even suggesting additional litigation. Last month, he went on a triade about the network’s reporting on Qatar’s gift of a 747-8 airplane to be used as Air Froce One and later transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation.
Moran joined ABC News in 1997.
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