Terry Moran is the latest casualty in Donald Trump’s war against reality.
Moran, the former senior White House correspondent for ABC News, recently posted on X that Trump and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are “world-class haters.” Trump, Moran wrote, uses hate as a means to obtain the glorification that is “his spiritual nourishment.” For Miller, on the other hand, “hatreds are his spiritual nourishment,” Moran said. “He eats his hate.”
He ain’t wrong. Miller recently demanded a daily quota of 3,000 arrests per day of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and then sold it as rounding up the “most dangerous criminals” threatening the country. That edict spurred the ICE raids that led to the protests in L.A. that are now growing across the country.
ICE agents I’ve spoken with say they have arrested or detained office workers, janitors, dishwashers, gardeners, and day laborers and raided Home Depots. “That’s not where you find dangerous criminals,” I was told.
According to ABC News, Moran was out of line. “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,” a company spokesperson said after failing to renew Moran’s contract.
While Moran’s firing is rare, it is not unheard of. At an international drug summit news conference in San Antonio in 1992, a 30-year-old reporter asked President George H.W. Bush how he was dealing with the DEA and other law enforcement officials who believed the war on drugs was a joke, and who felt the attendance of Bush — and the presidents of seven other nations — at the summit was a joke as well. The reporter worked at an NBC affiliate in San Antonio, and it was then ABC’s senior White House correspondent Sam Donaldson who reported on and highlighted the incident after the “pushy” reporter was fired for “being rude” to the president.
I was that reporter. And Donaldson’s response was quite different from what ABC did this week.
The facts are clear. Trump has distilled the anger and hatred in this country and harvested a bitter wine that threatens democracy. And Miller is a vile little man whom Moran understands all too well.
We've seen the results of this hate manifested in Los Angeles. It is a made-for-television event, complete with video, slide shows and photos to bolster Donald Trump's point of view while ignoring facts.
We’ve seen the results of this hate manifested in Los Angeles. It is a made-for-television event, complete with video, slide shows and photos to bolster Donald Trump’s point of view while ignoring facts and inflaming divisiveness and more hatred.
As usual, he blames the press and former president Joe Biden. Presidential pep secretary Karoline Leavitt declared as much from the Brady Briefing Room on Wednesday. Her take on the events in Los Angeles is a fractured fairy tale of fiction contrary to reality. She claimed California Gov. Gavin Newsom was incompetent — Trump usually just calls him “Newscum” to make that point — and then she flashed actual pictures of fires and used them to fan the flames of discontent.
Meanwhile, reporters in L.A. are in physical peril as they try to provide vetted facts the administration readily denies. “Shooting the messenger” is a metaphor for blaming those who bring you news that you do not want to hear. It is not an action to be taken on live television by an officer of the law.
Australian television reporter Lauren Tomasi was shot with a rubber bullet by an officer while reporting live in Los Angeles earlier this week.
There is no acceptable reason for shooting an unarmed reporter — short of a life-ending cerebral infarction that causes you to draw and fire indiscriminately.
It’s simple: You don’t shoot at unarmed people like they are moving targets at a gun range.
What can the shooter say? “I was only following orders?” If we remember our history — and facts show, many of us don’t — we know that excuse never works. “It was an accident?” Look at the video. Decide.
Just 144 days into the new Trump regime, and he has slaughtered the government whose cornerstones are three separate, but co-equal, branches of government. Fealty is everything. Dissent, we have seen, is punishable. Congress has folded. Only a handful of judges that Trump calls “activists” stand between us and total autocracy.
This week, in the wake of sending troops to Los Angeles, Trump threatened “very heavy force” against any protesters at his Big Beautiful Birthday Party on June 14. He is trying to turn the U.S. military into a domestic police force.
Trump is a political arsonist who creates a fire to put it out. He’s desperately trying to create the circumstances to declare martial law and justify the $134 million that his administration says it will cost to activate the more than 2000 National Guard troops, along with 700 Marines from Camp Pendleton, who have little or no work to do in Los Angeles. I guess letting them sleep on the floor in the Federal Building saves some money, but it’s a poor way to treat those who serve.
Trump does not care. All he wants is absolute control of the country, the elimination of free speech and the inability of the people to peaceably assemble.
That’s what California Gov. Gavin Newsom inferred Tuesday night in a primetime address. “Donald Trump's government isn’t protecting our communities. They're traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point,” Newsom explained. “A president who wants to be bound by no law or Constitution is perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions. ... He’s declared a war—on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. . .He’s delegitimizing news organizations and assaulting the First Amendment, threatening to defund them. He’s dictating what universities can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch— foundations of an orderly and civil society.”
Trump counters that the protests in Los Angeles are violent riots bordering on insurrection.
I have covered protests, riots and conflicts on three continents in the last 40 years. I was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. I was in both Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore in 2015. I was also in L.A. during the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict in 1992. That was the last time the Marines were mobilized — at the request of local and state authorities. In four days of riots, 63 people were killed, 2,383 were injured, more than 12,000 were arrested and estimates of property damage exceeded $1 billion, making it the most destructive period of local unrest in U.S. history.
The scale of destruction in 1992 justifies the Marines — not what we’ve seen in Los Angeles as of Wednesday. Contrary to Trump’s rhetoric, at no point have the police lost control. It’s silly to suggest they have. It hasn’t been violent enough to warrant that observation. In fact, I’ve reported from state fairs and sports celebrations that have been more violent than the Los Angeles protests. In 2012, I covered a “celebration” in Lexington, Kentucky, after the University of Kentucky Wildcats won the NCAA tournament. That became a riot with multiple arrests, extensive property damage and a shooting. No Marines.
Then there were the “festivities” in Philadelphia earlier this year after the Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. There were two shootings, a stabbing — and widespread looting. Dozens were arrested, 22 were injured and one college student died after attempting to scale a light pole. No Marines.
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The protesters marching on Monday and Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles chanted “Peaceful protest.” I heard others echoing John Lennon: “Give peace a chance.” Street vendors sold snow cones, hot dogs, sodas and water. State workers cleaned up the graffiti spray painted on buildings and sidewalks the night before with no interference from the protesters, other than a few saying, “Hey, that’s artwork not graffiti.” So, don’t get me wrong. There were some obnoxious, self righteous people there — after all, every protest has them. But that’s annoying, not life threatening.
Trump and his subordinates have eagerly displayed photographs of a burning driverless car with a young man standing on top of it holding a Mexican flag. It is a visual meant to destroy the narrative of the largely peaceful protests I have witnessed this week. “At night the crazies come out,” a police officer working the protests told me. Both Newsom and Trump say “agitators” are responsible for the violence, with Trump speculating that some might be paid. If that’s the case, then logic dictates that we ask; Who would pay agitators to make the protests more violent?
Meanwhile, the Marines and the National Guard have been mostly invisible. The California Highway Patrol, Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department have done the heavy lifting – keeping control with helicopters, hundreds of patrolmen on foot and hundreds of patrol cars. They have successfully limited the protests to about 10 city blocks while dealing with people throwing rocks, bricks, fireworks and other things at them.
“I’ve been on duty 12 hours,” a police officer told me late Tuesday night after Mayor Karen Bass invoked an 8 p.m. curfew. “I’d really like some time just to take a bathroom break.” That night, the police spent most of their time herding protesters into areas where they could be cited for breaking curfew and taken away on buses.
A veteran officer, who was a teenager during the riots in 1992, told me what he’s seen in the last week “ain’t nothing, brother. Trump’s making it all up. He’s escalating it.”
Still, at times the police have acted roughly. (Rubber bullets and tear gas, anyone?) On Wednesday evening more protesters were arrested. People in the crowd near Los Angeles City Hall screamed “peaceful protest” as they had on Tuesday but were ultimately forced to run into neighboring Grand Park. Officers were seen wielding batons on some protesters as they retreated. Meanwhile other protests broke out across the country, with thousands involved in several cities, including Las Vegas, San Antonio, New York, Seattle and Spokane.
As Gov. Newsom said, if there are lawbreakers, let them be prosecuted. But he also warned: “This isn’t about protests in Los Angeles. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here. Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we feared has arrived. There are no longer any checks and balances.”
As the protests and raids spread, Gov. Newsom is being proved right.
As for me? I stand with Terry Moran. I’m thankful I haven’t been hit with a rubber bullet, though I have tasted a little tear gas. Like one of the protesters said on television: It tastes like fascism.
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