Former ABC News senior correspondent Terry Moran did not mince words when discussing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Appearing on former MSNBC host Chris Matthews’s Substack podcast, Moran labeled Miller a liar who thrives on “cruelty,” as the two engaged in a searing critique of the Trump advisor.
“What do you make of this guy? I don’t want to get you in more trouble, but honesty doesn’t hurt too much. I think honesty does work,” Matthews asked. “Steve Miller, I mean, he strikes me in the same area you described him. He seems to me having an attitude. It goes beyond politics—something vindictive. Is that the right word? Is it cruel? It seems to be there’s something there to precede Donald Trump.”
Matthews’s comment alluded to Moran’s recent firing. His contract with ABC was not renewed in June, shortly after he tweeted that Miller “is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred”—a statement ABC deemed a “clear violation” of company policy.
On the podcast, Moran doubled down on his criticism of President Trump’s top aide, pointing to old videos of Miller as a young man defending the Iraq War and describing torture as a “celebration of human life and dignity.” The clip first surfaced in 2017 and was dismissed at the time by the Trump White House as a “sketch comedy routine.”
“I think you’re exactly right,” Moran said. “We now see a bunch of old videos of him as a high schooler, as a young post-college person spitting the same kind of venom and lies, and the word that occurs to me is vicious. He’s a vicious man. He’s cruel and clearly relishes cruelty.”
Moran went even further, accusing Miller of using deceit as a means to advance his career.
“He lies and clearly sees lying as a way of exerting power on people,” Moran said. “There is something deeply wrong about the way he addresses the public, and it’s a bludgeoning. The cruelty is the point. He’s about power. Trump is his path to power.”
Moran added that Trump relies on Miller to “put some intellectual gloss on his own gut instincts,” and said the pair work in tandem to “bludgeon the country with almost a disheartening and depressing level of cruelty and falsehood every day.”
“I think that’s accurate, fair, and true,” Moran concluded. “And it got me fired!”
