Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran said he tried to report on concerns about then-President Joe Biden's declining health but was blocked by senior network leadership, according to an interview published Monday.
Moran told The Daily Beast podcast that he had traveled with Biden to Japan in the spring of 2023 and observed the president up close. «I thought, 'Okay, he's still functioning, but man, he's frail,'» Moran said. «He looked like he'd blow away in a stiff wind.» He added that by Biden's final year in office, the president's voice had been reduced to a «whisper.»
Moran said he pitched a story on Biden's health before any other network correspondent did, based on what he had seen firsthand. «I tried to do the story of Biden's health before anybody else did in network, because I'd seen it,» he said. «And I got shut down very hard.»
According to Moran, he sent an email pitch to his editors describing the issue «gently and as respectfully» as possible. He argued that the president's condition was a legitimate matter for voters. «I'm not a doctor. I'm not diagnosing,» Moran said. «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.»
Moran said ABC News leadership rejected the pitch, telling him the president's health was «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, left ABC News after a social media post in which he attacked President Donald Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. He called them «world-class haters» in a now-deleted post on X. An ABC News spokesperson confirmed at the time that the network would not renew his agreement, calling the post a clear violation of network policies.
The topic of Biden's health and mental acuity has drawn renewed attention since he left office, including books and reports alleging that aides concealed the extent of his decline. CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson co-authored «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 hid signs of decline from the public.
Moran's account was noted by psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who told Fox News Digital that the journalist was doing his due diligence. «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.»
Alpert added that it is «also a very human tendency to avoid information that creates a problem for us,» and that «sometimes it's easier not to look too closely and that seems to be exactly what ABC was doing.» He said the gap between what the public perceives as obvious and what an institution is willing to acknowledge can damage credibility. «The wider that gap gets, the more people start wondering whether they're getting the whole story,» Alpert said. «A journalist's job is to be willing to ask the questions, even without knowing all the answers.»