Terry Moran defends ‘fair and accurate’ post about Trump that got him dropped by ABC News

By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — Terry Moran has no regrets.

The now-former ABC News correspondent sat down for a pair of interviews on Monday, speaking out for the first time about losing his job at the network after he posted a social media missive last week against President Donald Trump and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

“I don’t think you should ever regret telling the truth. And I don’t,” Moran told The New York Times. He echoed that sentiment during a live-streamed interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. “I wrote it because I thought it was true,” Moran said.

Moran, who interviewed Trump in the Oval Office in late April, wrote in the now-deleted X post that Miller, a “world-class hater,” is “richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” and that “hatreds are his spiritual nourishment.”

For Trump, he added, hatred is “only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”

The post shocked Moran’s own ABC News colleagues and drew public outrage from White House officials, including Miller, Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The network initially suspended Moran and, two days later, announced it would not renew his contract.

Moran, 65, a long-time news correspondent for ABC who has never been one to publicly share his opinions, styled himself as a “proud centrist” in his interview with The Bulwark. Since first joining the network in 1997, Moran has served as chief foreign correspondent, chief White House correspondent, “Nightline” co-anchor and, most recently, senior national correspondent.

“It wasn’t a drunk tweet,” Moran told the Times on Monday about his late-night posting on X. “I used very strong language deliberately,” he told The Bulwark, admitting the post was “very hot” but nevertheless “accurate and true.”

The offending post, he said, “was something that was in my heart and mind.”

Regarding his ABC ouster, Moran told the Bulwark, “From my perspective, it looked like a business decision. I became bad business, it feels like.”

In his Times interview, Moran pushed back against the ABC News framing that he was let go ahead of his contract’s expiration, instead alleging the outlet was “bailing” on an “oral agreement” to renew his contract for three years. “We had a deal,” he said.

ABC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Moran also resisted the notion that journalists should strive to be objective. He told The Bulwark that “there is no Mount Olympus of objectivity where a mandarin class of wise people have no feelings about their society.”

“What you have to be is fair and accurate,” Moran said. “I would refer to the interview with the president that I did, or a lot of my work.”

Shortly after being dropped by ABC News, Moran launched a Substack newsletter, joining the growing ranks of TV news stars going independent with their reporting and analysis. The Times reported that Moran has thus far drawn more than 90,000 subscribers on the platform.

Moran seemed assured in his move, telling the Bulwark, a fellow Substack-hosted publication, “We are free to speak our minds here.”

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