ABC suspends journalist for calling Trump and adviser ‘world-class haters’

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Disney-owned ABC News suspended a senior journalist on Sunday after he called Donald Trump and a key adviser “world-class haters” on social media, potentially setting the world’s largest media group back into the line of fire of the US president.

Senior ABC News correspondent Terry Moran posted on X just after midnight Saturday: “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification.”

He also wrote that Trump aide Stephen Miller “is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred”. Moran has since deleted the post.

ABC News on Sunday suspended Moran “pending further evaluation”, a spokesperson told the Financial Times.

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others. The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards”, the group said in a statement.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Moran’s post as “unacceptable and unhinged rhetoric”.

“ABC is going to have to answer for what their so-called journalist put out on Twitter in the wee hours of the night”, she told Fox News on Sunday.

“But this speaks to the distrust that the American public have in the legacy media.”

ABC News has already been the subject of Trump’s ire since he returned to the White House. Trump sued ABC after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely said on-air that Trump had been found “liable for rape”. Disney in December paid $15mn to Trump’s presidential library to settle the lawsuit.

In his second term as president, Trump has ratcheted up his attack on the media, using lawsuits and regulatory threats. He sued CBS News, accusing the network of deceptively editing an interview with political rival Kamala Harris last year, while also passing executive orders to strip federal funding for public broadcasters such as PBS and NPR.

Paramount, which owns CBS News, is in talks to settle the lawsuit with Trump, a prospect which has infuriated the CBS newsroom.