Terry Moran says network rejected his Biden health story after he witnessed president’s frailty
Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran revealed Monday that he tried to report on concerns about then-President Joe Biden's declining health — but was promptly shut down by senior leadership at the network.
"In late 2023, early 2024, you know, it was pretty clear that Biden was fading rather quickly," Moran told The Daily Beast podcast. "I had actually traveled with him to Japan in the spring of 2023 and kind of eyeballed him there, and I thought, 'Okay, he’s still functioning, but man, he’s frail.’ He looked like he’d blow away in a stiff wind."
Moran added that the now-83-year-old former president’s voice was merely a "whisper" by his final year in office.
"I tried to do the story of Biden’s health before anybody else did in network, because I’d seen it," Moran said. "And I got shut down very hard."
Moran said he sent an email pitch to his editors for a story about Biden’s declining health "gently and as respectfully" as possible.
"It was like, ‘You know, this is [a] legit issue for Americans to be interested in,’" Moran said. "I'm not a doctor. I'm not diagnosing. But we all know what we know when we see people fading. We all have had grandparents. We're all getting old ourselves. And so there's no doubt about it, this is a legitimate concern for the voters of America."
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However, Moran said that ABC News’ leadership allegedly shot down the pitch, telling him the then-president’s health is "the medical unit’s business, not yours."
Fox News Digital reached out to ABC News for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Moran — a veteran correspondent at the outlet — left ABC News following a social media post in which he attacked President Donald Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Moran called Trump and Miller "world-class haters" in the now-deleted post on X.
"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," a spokesperson for ABC News confirmed to Fox News Digital at the time.
The topic of Biden's health and mental acuity while president received renewed attention following his departure from office, including books and reports alleging that aides concealed the extent of his decline.
Some mainstream media outlets have also drawn criticism over their coverage of questions about the then-president's mental acuity, with CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson co-authoring "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," which draws on more than 200 interviews and argues that Biden's inner circle concealed signs of decline from the public.
Moran's attempt to report on Biden's health — and his account that ABC News declined the pitch — was noted by psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who told Fox News Digital the veteran journalist was simply doing his due diligence as a reporter.
"Moran was doing exactly what reporters are paid to do: he noticed something and wanted to ask questions about it," Alpert said. "You don’t have to diagnose Biden to report that he appeared different. We make observations about people every day without knowing the medical explanation for them. Saying ‘I see a change’ and saying ‘I know what’s causing that change’ are completely different statements."
According to Alpert, it’s "also a very human tendency to avoid information that creates a problem for us," adding that, "sometimes it’s easier not to look too closely and that seems to be exactly what ABC was doing."
"I think what ultimately hurts credibility is the gap between what the public thinks is obvious and what an institution is willing to acknowledge," Alpert told Fox News Digital. "The wider that gap gets, the more people start wondering whether they're getting the whole story. A journalist's job is to be willing to ask the questions, even without knowing all the answers."
Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.