ABC News has suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran after he referred to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as a “world-class hater” in a social media post.
“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” an ABC News spokesperson said in a comment to HuffPost. “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.”
In the social media post, Moran, who has worked as a senior national correspondent for ABC News since 2018, wrote that “bile” is what’s interesting about Miller.
“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism,” Moran wrote early Sunday morning in the since-deleted post. “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 only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”
Vice President JD Vance called the post an “absolutely vile smear” of Miller. Miller said Moran “pulled off his mask.”
“The most important fact about Terry’s full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America,” Miller responded on social media. “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.”
It’s unclear what led to Moran’s post, but Miller has been credited with shaping President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including a zero-tolerance policy, which separated parents and children who illegally crossed the border.
An outside White House adviser told Vanity Fair in 2018 that Miller likes seeing photos of families being separated at the southern border.
“Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border,” an outside White House adviser told Vanity Fair. “He’s a twisted guy, the way he was raised and picked on. There’s always been a way he’s gone about this. He’s Waffen-SS.”
In April, during Moran’s interview with Trump, Trump said Moran wasn’t “being very nice” after Moran pushed back on Trump’s claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a gang tattoo.