Hate-Trump ABC News correspondent Terry Moran may soon find himself looking for a job.
The equally hate-Trump network suspended Moran after he called White House aide Stephen Miller and President Trump “haters” in a deranged late-night X post.
Vice President J.D. Vance reposted a screenshot of Moran’s “vile smear,” as Vance called it. ABC told Moran to sit out for a while so it can evaluate what he wrote.
Moran’s drive-by attack on Miller and Trump is another black eye for the once-respected network, which recently settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million.
What Moran Wrote
Moran might still be mad that Trump put him in his place during an interview on the president’s first 100 days. But in any event, Moran posted his rant on Sunday morning, a few minutes after midnight.
“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism,” Moran began:
Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpism movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller. It’s not brains. It’s bile.
But Moran didn’t stop there. The ABC veteran unbosomed himself of an hysterical tirade that suggests he might have been posting under the influence, given that he claimed that Miller’s physiognomy exudes hatred. And he couldn’t resist tossing in a few unkind words about Miller’s boss:
Miller is a man who’s 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.
Reactions
Early Sunday, Vance struck back against Moran’s “vile smear,” which is “dripping with hatred.” Vance told followers to remember Moran’s post when they watch ABC’s coverage of the administration. And Miller, he wrote, is a patriot.
“As it happens, I know Stephen quite well,” Vance wrote:
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.
It’s why he fought so hard to get President Trump elected and why he works [s]o hard to implement the agenda.
ABC should apologize to Stephen. What Terry posted is disgraceful.
And Miller wrote that Moran has exposed the “corporate press” for what they are: radical leftists.
“For decades, the privileged anchors and reporters narrating and gatekeeping our society have been radicals adopting a journalist’s pose,” Miller wrote. “Terry pulled off his mask.”
“This is unhinged and unacceptable,” White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.
Commentator Benny Johnson went further.
“ABC News is the beneficiary of lavish broadcast licenses and privileges funded by the American taxpayer with the *express* requirement that they deliver non-bias[ed] coverage in the ‘public interest,’” he wrote on X:
Given this psychotic and pathological anti-Trump meltdown by ABC News top anchor Terry Moran, I am calling for his immediate firing and [an] apology from the network.
ABC News[‘] broadcast license must be stripped if they do not immediately act.
Lawsuit Settled
For its part, ABC was none too happy about Moran’s post. “ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” the network 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.
ABC is understandably furious, even if a defamation lawsuit from Miller would likely fail. It recently paid $15 million to settle false claims about Trump by This Week host George Stephanopoulos, a former torpedo for the Clinton Mafia.
Riffing off kooky columnist E. Jean Carroll’s two frivolous-but-successful lawsuits against Trump — one of which found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll despite zero evidence — Stephanopoulos asked U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican, how she, a rape victim, could vote for Trump. Stephanopoulos twice said a jury found Trump “liable for rape.”
“You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president,” Stephanopoulos said:
Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape, and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?
Mace told Stephanopolous that the former Clinton gopher “meant to shame me about another potential rape victim.”
It’s actually not about shaming you. It’s a question about Don- … You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.
The problem for Stephanopoulos: The jury found no such thing.
Trump sued to punish the defamation; ABC settled. The settlement included a statement that ABC appended to the defamatory story on its website: “Editor’s Note: ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
In a richly-deserved comeuppance for the disgraced network, the settlement will go toward building a Trump presidential library.
