Veteran journalist Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC News after he was suspended by the broadcaster for a social media post that called United States President Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller “world-class haters”.
In a statement, the US network said on Tuesday that Moran’s quickly-deleted post on X was “a clear violation of ABC News policies”, the Associated Press news agency reports.
It added that Moran’s contract was ending, and “based on his recent post… we have made the decision not to renew”.
The post on Sunday night was primarily directed at Miller, whom Moran described as “the brains behind Trumpism”.
“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran had said on X.
Moran, who had recently interviewed Trump in his role as Senior National Correspondent for ABC News, also described the US President as a “world-class hater”, but said that in Trump’s case, it was only a “means to an end” of “his own glorification”.
In Miller’s case, however, Moran said, “his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate”.
The Trump administration quickly condemned Moran’s post, with Vice President JD Vance describing it as an “absolutely vile smear of Stephen Miller”.
Moran, 65, had worked at ABC News since 1997. He was a longtime co-anchor of “Nightline”, and covered the Supreme Court and national politics.
During an interview with Trump that was broadcast a month ago, the president told Moran, “You’re not being very nice” in the midst of a contentious exchange about deportations.
Trump aide Steven Cheung responded to Moran’s exit on Tuesday with a post on X, simply saying: “Talk s***, get hit.”
Miller, meanwhile, has been focused on the Trump administration’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard soldiers and a Marine battalion to Los Angeles, amid anti-immigration enforcement protests in California’s capital city.
In one post on X on Tuesday, Miller said that California has become a “criminal sanctuary for millions of illegal alien invaders” and that “huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations.”
The AP news agency reported that Moran’s contract with ABC had been due to expire on Friday, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Moran’s post also comes at what was already a sensitive time for ABC News. The network agreed to pay $15m towards Trump’s presidential library in December to settle a defamation lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate claim that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E Jean Carroll.
Moran leaves ABC as major television networks in the US struggle to retain audiences amid the soaring popularity of some podcasters and subscription-based newsletters.
The shift has also been embraced by some journalists, such as Mehdi Hasan, who started his own media network in early 2024, after quitting MSNBC when it cancelled his show in late 2023.
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