On Friday, Donald Trump announced Steven Cheung, formerly his 2024 campaign spokesperson, will be the new White House communications director in his incoming administration.
Cheung, who worked on all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns, has acquired a reputation for fierce loyalty to the president-elect and for cutting and sometimes crude attacks on his political enemies. These include claiming President Biden “shuffles around like he has a full diaper in his pants” and calling Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis a “desperate eunuch.”
The appointment of Cheung is one of a series suggesting Trump is focusing heavily on loyalty; the former president told podcaster Joe Rogan before the election that his biggest mistake was selecting “bad people” to serve under him.
On Friday, Trump also announced Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary and Sergio Gor as director of the presidential personnel office. The pair previously worked as the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and head of pro-Trump super PAC Right for America respectively.
In a statement, Trump said: “Steven Cheung and Sergio Gor have been trusted Advisors since my first Presidential Campaign in 2016, and have continued to champion America First principles throughout my First Term, all the way to our Historic Victory in 2024.”
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Cheung worked as a spokesperson for the Ultimate Fighting Championship before joining the Trump campaign as director of rapid response in 2016. He went on to spend two years working on communications in the Trump White House before being a consultant to the then-president’s unsuccessful 2020 reelection campaign. According to a March 2024 profile in The New Yorker, Trump has nicknamed Cheung, who has Chinese heritage, “my sumo wrestler.”
Newsweek has summarized some of Cheung’s most-cutting attacks on Trump’s political rivals. Cheung and Trump’s 2024 presidential election campaign were approached for comment via email on Saturday outside of regular office hours.
Vice President Kamala Harris
In October, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times his former boss had claimed Adolf Hitler “did some good things.” Trump strongly denied the allegation. Referencing the report, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler—the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews.”
Cheung hit back, branding Harris a “stone-cold loser who is increasingly desperate because she is flailing, and her campaign is in shambles.”
Cheung added: “That is why she continues to peddle outright lies and falsehoods that are easily disproved. The fact is that Kamala’s dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump, and she continues to stoke the flames of violence, all in the name of politics. She is despicable, and her grotesque behavior proves she is wholly unfit for office.”
President Joe Biden
In a statement about Biden provided to Forbes magazine, Cheung said: “He can barely put two coherent sentences together and slowly shuffles around like he has a full diaper in his pants, often falling on his a** in front of the world.”
Governor Ron DeSantis
In November 2023, Cheung hit out at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, one of Trump’s chief rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, after he held a televised debate with California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Speaking to The New York Post, Cheung branded DeSantis a “desperate eunuch who is too busy debating Gavin Newsom instead of actually campaigning.”
Nikki Haley
Referring to former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, another of Trump’s rival for the GOP nomination, Cheung said: “It’s clear to see that Haley’s campaign is just one giant grift to either build her name ID for life after politics or to audition for a cable news contributor contract.”
Cheung later added: “Everything she’s ever achieved will be thrown into a dumpster fire that she lit herself.”
Mark Milley and Bob Woodward
In his recently published book War, legendary journalist Bob Woodward said former chair of the Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley, formerly an army general, had described Trump as “fascist to the core.”
In response, Cheung attacked both men, saying: “Woke train-wreck Mark Milley clearly suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and it’s no surprise he pals around with a washed-up fiction writer like Bob Woodward to peddle lies and misinformation.
“If Milley spent this much time and effort doing his job, maybe the Afghanistan debacle would have never happened,” Cheung added.
Anthony Scaramucci
In June, Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House director of communications under Trump, said the then-Republican front-runner wouldn’t pick Marco Rubio as his running mate because the Florida senator had previously joked about him having “microscopic hands.”
When contacted for comment by Newsweek, Cheung simply replied, “11 days,” an apparent reference to the length of time Scaramucci spent working in the White House during 2017 before he was fired.
Judge Tanya Chutkan
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s criminal trial over claims he broke the law trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, issued a ruling against the Republican candidate, just weeks before polling day.
In response, Cheung said: “Radical Democrats are hell-bent on interfering in the presidential election on behalf of Lyin’ Kamala Harris. With just over two weeks until Election Day, President Trump is dominating this race and Crazed Liberals throughout the Deep State are freaking out.”
The spokesperson described the case against Trump as “a sham and a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely.”
