Screenshot via Chris Matthews Substack
Former ABC News senior correspondent Terry Moran laid into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, calling him a liar who relishes in “cruelty” during an appearance on former MSNBC host Chris Matthews’s Substack podcast during which both made personal digs at Miller.
“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. 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 asked Moran.
The “more trouble” remark refers to Moran’s ABC contract not being renewed in June, shortly after he sent out a tweet calling Miller someone who “is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred.” ABC called the tweet a “clear violation”
Moran held nothing back in criticizing President Trump’s advisor, referring to recently-resurfaced videos of Miller as a young man discussing the Iraq War and calling torture a “celebration of human life and dignity.” The video was originally published in 2017. At the time, the Trump White House characterized it as a “sketch comedy routine.”
“I think you’re exactly right, and 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 said.
The former ABC reporter took things further, accusing Miller of championing falsehoods to further his personal ambition.
“He lies and clearly sees lying as a way of exerting power on people. There is something deeply wrong about the way he addresses the public, and it’s a bludgeoning,” said Moran. “The cruelty is the point. He’s about power. Trump is his path to power. Trump sees him as essentially putting kinda some intellectual gloss on his own gut instincts, and they work together 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. And it got me fired!”