ABC News suspended national correspondent Terry Moran on Sunday, just hours after he launched a personal attack against White House official Stephen Miller. The decision followed intense backlash, including from the Trump administration, after Moran posted and then deleted a comment calling Miller “a world-class hater.”
The early morning post on X drew attention fast. ABC didn’t waste much time responding. By Sunday afternoon, multiple outlets confirmed Moran’s suspension. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had publicly called on ABC to act.
“ABC is going to have to answer for what their, again, so-called journalist put out on Twitter in the wee hours of the night, calling Stephen Miller vile,” Leavitt told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “They said that President Trump is a world class hater – Stephen Miller. And this is, again, coming from someone who is supposed to be an unbiased and professional journalist.”
Moran has a history of injecting his views into news coverage. During a past Oval Office interview, he pressured then-President Trump to contact El Salvador’s president to extradite alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The suspect was later returned to the U.S. to face human trafficking charges in federal court.
ABC News itself has faced growing criticism over its handling of political coverage. Debate moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir were slammed for aggressively “fact-checking” Trump during his 2024 debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Critics noted that Harris made several false claims during the debate—yet was never interrupted.
The network also recently settled a high-profile defamation lawsuit with Trump. The lawsuit stemmed from a March 2024 interview where “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos referred to Trump as a “rapist” during a heated exchange with Rep. Nancy Mace. ABC reportedly agreed to settle before the case went to trial.
Miller, who served as a senior adviser to Trump and remains a key policy voice in the administration, responded to Moran’s outburst with a sharp critique of the media. “The most important fact about Terry’s full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America,” Miller wrote on X. “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.”