Jon Stewart let ABC have it over the firing of ABC News anchor Terry Moran, which he called “so stupid” on his Weekly Show podcast Thursday.
“They shouldn’t have fired him,” Stewart said in the episode, responding to a listener’s question about whether the network made the right call in axing Moran over his social media comments about Stephen Miller. “The entire thing is because ABC clings to this facade that they somehow exist in a bubble outside all of this. It’s a joke. They’re a f—ing joke.”
Moran was let go from his senior national correspondent job at ABC News on Tuesday after 28 years with the network, following his scathing X post blasting Donald Trump’s chief of staff as a “world-class hater.”
The Trump administration vowed to pressure ABC into “holding Moran accountable” for the post, and soon after he was suspended indefinitely. Two days later, ABC announced it would not renew his contract. A spokesperson said his post about Miller’s “richly endowed capacity for hatred” fell short of its expectations for “objectivity, fairness and professionalism.”
Stewart said Moran didn’t write anything inaccurate about Miller, even taking it a step further and adding “sick f—” to the list of insults.
Moran had previously stoked Trump’s ire by fact-checking him during their April interview to mark his first 100 days in his office, when Trump insisted (falsely) that deported Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia literally had the gang initials “MS-13” tattooed across his knuckles.
“He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way,” Moran clarified, “But let’s move on.” Trump shot back that he was “not being very nice.”
Stewart wasn’t buying ABC’s reasoning for Moran’s firing, as he compared the move to its settlement with Trump over George Stephanopoulos’ on-air comments as yet another example of ABC bending the knee.
“They shouldn’t have paid the $15 million” for that either, Stewart said Thursday, as he argued that letting Moran go was hypocritical in the current media landscape. “Literally, every day on Fox News, they’re taking stuff out of context or their people are saying utterly vicious things about Democratic politicians and all kinds of other things.”
There’s no end to pleasing Trump by firing every journalist he takes issue with, Stewart added. “The problem with it all is there’s no level of fealty that is enough.”
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