Terry Moran Did Nothing Wrong
Yesterday, ABC News fired anchor Terry Moran following a two-day suspension after Moran tweeted last Sunday that Stephen Miller was “a world-class hater” whose hate is “his spiritual nourishment.”
MAGAWorld met Moran’s tweet with outrage: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Moran’s remarks “unhinged and unacceptable,” adding that she had called ABC to question “how they plan to hold Terry accountable. Vice President JD Vance extolled Miller as a patriot, demanding that ABC apologize to him for Moran’s “despicable” post.
ABC News already displayed its fealty to President Trump last December, after settling a defamation lawsuit for $15 million, so Moran’s firing is sadly no surprise. What it is, however, is an act of cowardice from a media giant more afraid of appearing biased — or of losing their access to President Trump — than of telling the truth.
An ABC spokesperson said in a statement about the firing that ABC “hold[s] all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.” The word “hater” may not be objective, but Moran’s statement that Miller receives “spiritual nourishment” from his hatred is not up for debate. Miller’s entire public persona revolves around getting off on people’s outrage, whether it’s the outrage of White liberals or the outrage of immigrant families watching their loved ones put away for legally dubious reasons. It is his rocket fuel.
An anecdote from a New Yorker piece on Miller in February 2020 proves Moran’s point. The opening of the piece depicts a debate over the administration’s new policy taking away the right of Latino immigrants to seek asylum in the United States, instead forcing them to apply for asylum in their countries of origin:
“One participant in the November meeting pointed out that El Salvador didn’t have a functioning asylum system. ‘They don’t need a system,’ Miller interrupted. He began speaking over people, asking questions, then cutting off the answers.
“As the meeting ended, Miller held up his hand to make a final comment. ‘I didn’t mean to come across as harsh,’ he said. His voice dropped. ‘It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.’”
If the only thing filling Miller’s emptiness are writing policies that make life objectively harder for immigrants, then he is spiritually impoverished. He craves both the results of these policies and the condemnation of others to justify his existence. He got both when, a few days after the article came out, Amnesty International released a statement condemning his policies, including those in the debate from The New Yorker:
“The White House similarly strong-armed Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras into signing ill-conceived “Safe Third Country” agreements, under which US authorities have already deported hundreds of asylum seekers to Guatemala, returning them to the very region they fled. It has also implemented new, rapid-deportation programs that dispense with the procedural protections required to ensure asylum processes are fair. These policies violate the right to seek asylum and put people at risk of potentially lethal violence in three of the region’s most violent countries.”
Miller further proved Moran’s point in his junior and senior years at Duke University, when he wrote bi-monthly column for the student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle. His columns read like a liberal parody of conservative writer — and I have read all of them. A couple of his greatest hits include:
- His debut column whining about how Duke freshmen have to listen to Maya Angelou give a welcome address.
- An argument that the wage gap is a myth and men should get paid more because they do harder, more dangerous jobs, like construction and plumbing.
- A piece about how we should show no mercy to Muslims because of 9/11.
- Turning his decision not to give a birthday card to a Duke janitor into a stance against moral condescension.
The most telling column comes from the beginning of his senior year, when a female classmate called him racist. “I wasn’t surprised by her accusation,” he writes. “It had already come to my attention that this had been a favorite topic of hers.” After she told him he hated Black people, he says to her:
“‘You’ve got a mental disease…You’re obsessed with race. You see everything in terms of race, and you see everyone who disagrees with your worldviews as a racist. And guess what? Almost everybody you’ve been talking to thinks something is wrong with you. They’ve come up to me and told me. They’re just afraid to tell you what they think because they’re worried you’ll call them a racist.’
She then started asking other people in the class if they shared my view of her. They were tellingly silent.”
It’s hard not to imagine Miller sporting an ear-to-ear grin while he blasts this woman to her face (assuming this is actually what he said and not something he wrote to make himself look better), all but calling her hysterical to characterize her as a wailing banshee. This is what getting spiritual nourishment out of hate looks like.
All of this evidence bolster Moran’s claims. If he wanted to write a longer follow-up that used these pieces (or others) as evidence for his argument, he could have done it. And if ABC objected to “world-class hater” Moran could have found another, more objective term to describe him. But rather than give him the chance to explicate himself, they gave him the boot and swept him under the rug.
Contrast ABC and Moran with CNN and Jake Tapper. As part of his media tour for his book Original Sin, Tapper has been speaking out against the Democratic Party, even going so far as to say he “can’t stand them” (try picturing Lina Lamont saying it if you need a quick laugh.) Tapper and CNN have been widely criticized for their behavior this past month, yet neither have suffered any consequences. If the primary goal of the news is objectivity, then Tapper’s subjective statements against Democrats, which are far more incendiary (and less evidence-based) than Moran’s comments, would be enough to oust him, but having right-wing positions rarely leads to consequences. If Tapper had said he can’t stand Republicans, it would be another story entirely, but in a landscape driven by Republican anger, the left must always be the ones who apologize or show penance, even when their criticisms are correct.
For more than 200 years, the American Press has been charged to act as guardians of democracy by telling the truth. But in firing Terry Moran, ABC and the rest are coming closer to being handmaidens to power — and once they do that, then the only truth left will be the one that pleases their Dear Leader the most.
