Terry Moran Biography
Terry Moran (birth name; Terence Patrick Moran) is a former ABC News anchor and senior national correspondent. He was fired on June 10, 2025 after almost 28 years at the network. This was as a result of his tweet calling President Trump and his Chief of Staff Stephen Miller world class haters saying their hatred is for spiritual nourishment. He will be joining substack.
Prior to the firing, he had secured and conducted an exclusive interview with President Donald Trump on the first 100 days of his second presidency. He was applauded for gently pressing the president over his false claims about a man deported by the administration to El Salvador. Trump became irritated in the middle of the exchange and told Moran that he had “never heard of you” and that he was not being very nice suggesting he should not push back given the “big break” he had been given in getting the sit-down interview.
He began his career writing for The New Republic before transitioning to broadcast and covered high profile criminal trials for Court TV, including O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers. He broke into politics by covering Bill Clinton’s presidency and Al Gore’s presidential campaign.
He has won several awards including the White House Correspondents Association’s Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential reporting on deadline and a George Foster Peabody Award.
Terry Moran Age, Early Life
Terry is 65 years old, he was born on December 9, 1959 in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Mount Prospect, Illinois, and Barrington Hills, Illinois. He is the son of Joseph Thomas Moran Jr. and Margaret Louise Goodrich. He was raised alongside 9 siblings; James Moran, Margaret (Peggy) Louise Moran, Joseph Thomas Moran III, Richard Moran, Lawrence Moran, Rosemary Moran, Mary Beth Moran and Gregory Moran.
Education
Moran graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts with a major in English from Lawrence University. When he joined the university in 1978, he wanted to be a lawyer but after working at the Lawrentian, the school’s magazine, he enjoyed it and changed his major.
After graduating, he moved to D.C. where he took a bartending job and started piching to the editors at The New Republic. He also worked for other magazine and his work led to Court TV which led to ABC News.
Is Terry Moran Married?
Terry is married to Johanna Cox since January 30, 2015. They have two children together Helen Matthews Cox born in 2012 and Michael Patrick Moran born in 2014 and Mary Lou born in 2016.
Johanna is a China Analyst. She studied at both Brown University graduating with a degree in East Asian Studies and Georgetown University graduating with a degree in East Asian Security. She is a former Chinese linguist snd analyst. In 2008 she won the reality TV show ‘Stylista’ and landed a job at Elle magazine as a Junior Editor. She quit in 2010. She was also a BuzzFeed contributor.
Terry was previously married to Karen Joyce Osler from June 3, 1989 to 2011. The couple have a daughter known as Madeleine Moran who just like her father, graduated from Lawrence University in 2018.
Terry Moran Fired
Moran was fired from ABC News on June 10, 2025 after being initially suspended for his tweet regarding Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. He has become the first high profile journalist to lose his job over publicly lambasting the president and his aides.
In a statement ABC News representative said they werenot going to renew his contract based on his violation of their policies.
“We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew. At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”
The firing comes after in December, the Walt Disney Co., ABC’s corporate parent, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump as a private citizen last fall over repeated assertions by anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found liable for rape in a civil trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, when the he was in fact found liable of sexual abuse, a lesser offense.
Trump as a private citizen is also suing CBS News over a “60 Minutes” interview in October that he claims was deceptively edited to help then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign.
Trump also want other outlets such as PBS and NPR federal funding cut calling their programming “left wing propaganda.”
What Did Terry Moran Say
On Sunday, June 8, 2025 Moran tweeted calling both President Trump and Stephen Miller world class haters. He took down the post but did not repudiate it.
“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into police. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller.
It’s not brains. It’s bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”
He also added that Trump’s hatred if for his spiritual nourishment. “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification [sic]. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”
The tweet caused an uproar from Trump’s camp with the White House officials including Vice President JD Vance and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt asking for him to be punished or fired.
Terry Moran Interview with President Trump
In April 2025, Moran conducted an exclusive interview with Trump, marking the end of his first 100 days in office. During the interview Trump told him he was not being very nice and even went ahead to say he granted him the interview because he had never heard of him. This was after Moran informed him that the image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legally protected father who was accidentally deported to El Salvador had been photoshopped.
Another moment that caught people’s attention from the interview was Trump’s reply to Moran’s query on what the Declaration of Independence meant to him.
“Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”
Terry Worked for ABC News for almost 28 years
Terry joined ABC News in 1997 from COURT TV where he was a correspondent and anchor. He was the primary ABC News correspondent assigned to the U.S. Supreme Court where he covered several major cases including the murder trial of British au pair Louise Woodward in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the fourth trial of Dr. Jack Kevorkian; the trial of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski among others.
In 1999, he began covering politics and policy. He covered the Bush administration and reported on the war on terror after the events of September 11, 2001.
In 2004, he began anchoring the “World News Tonight” Sunday, a position he held until joining “Nightline” as a co-anchor from 2005 to 2013. In this position, he covered former President Barack Obama’s administration
In 2013, he moved to London as ABC News’ chief foreign correspondent a postion he held until 2018 when he moved back to the U.S. and became ABC News Live anchor and senior national correspondent. He also lead ABC News’ coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court until his firing on June 10, 2025.
He has also worked as a print journalist for several publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic Magazine.
Career Highlights
- In April 2025 he secured an exclusive interview with President Donald J. Trump on the first 100 days in office.
- In May 2012, he interviewed an American man in Bolivia who was imprisoned and went uncharged by authorities after accusations of money laundering. His report revealed the corrupt judicial systen in Bolivia and the chaos within an unguarded prison.
- He conducted nine one-on-one interviews with Barack Obama, dating back to 2006. He conducted an exclusive interview with then Sen. Obama on race in America before his major speech on the subject in Philadelphia in March of 2008. Another exclusive interview n Baghdad with then-Sen. Obama in August 2008, and a July 2009 interview in Florida with then-President Obama on health care, Afghanistan, and the power of prayer in the president’s life.
- In May 2009, Moran did an interview with a confessed hit man in one of Mexico’s most notorious gangs while reporting from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on the raging drug violence that has brought the country to the brink of chaos. The report exposed corruption of the U.S. law enforcement officials in the multi-billion-dollar cross-border drug-trafficking business.
- In 1999, he covered the war in Kosovo, Balkans and its troubled aftermath. He investigated war-crimes stories and reported on the human impact of the ethnic-cleansing campaigns launched by both Serbs and Kosovars.
- While working at Court TV, he covered the murder triial of O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers. He also traveled to Bosnia and The Hague to cover the first international war-crimes trial since World War II—that of a Bosnian Serb named Dusko Tadic.
Terry Moran Awards
- In 2006, he was awarded the Merriman Smith Award by the White House Correspondents Association for excellence in presidential reporting on deadline.
- In 2007, he received the George Foster Peabody Award for his work reporting and anchoring the one-hour ABC News documentary “Out of Control: AIDS in Black America.”
- In 2012, he won a shared Emmy® with “Nightline” for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a Regular Scheduled Newscast.