Steven Cheung, a principal Trump campaign spokesman, snuck onto a Biden campaign conference call on Monday. He then took to X to call it "the saddest thing I’ve ever listened to."
"They have given up," Cheung wrote.
The Trump spox claimed that he was able to sign up for the conference call using his real name and media credentials, and the free-falling campaign let him in.
I used my official campaign email and name to sign up for this conference call, and the Biden communications and press operation basically let in.
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) July 1, 2024
Biden’s broke dick campaign.
Unfortunately for those of us who have been happily wallowing in Biden's cavalcade of bad news this past week, Cheung's conference call account was light on details. His only other comments were:
- On the Biden campaign call, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks admits that the SCOTUS ruling makes President Trump, “Immune, immune, immune!”
- I’m currently in the question queue. Have a good one.
- Biden press intern: "Thank you everyone for respecting the press embargo." … I did not respect the press embargo.
Related: Democrat Voters Are Making a Shocking Admission. What Does it Mean for the Trump Campaign?
Cheung has been part of Trump World since the former president's triumphant 2016 campaign. He began his political career as a staffer in California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, then moved to Washington, D.C., to work on the doomed McCain campaign. Cheung later spent several years as a communications director at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Las Vegas, Nev. He refers to himself as a "Pro wrestling historian" in his X bio. He is also a supporter of the Cauliflower Alley Club, an organization whose mission is "To financially assist those in the wrestling industry that [sic] have fallen on difficult financial times."
A bear of a man, Cheung is a natural fit for Trump's blustery communications team. Trump himself is a long-time pro wrestling fixture.
Trump was at one time "just another character in a World Wrestling Entertainment storyline," Mother Jones reported. "WWE cofounder Vince McMahon … has known Trump for decades. Shortly after the election, Trump tapped Vince’s wife and fellow cofounder, Linda McMahon—who served as WWE’s president and chief executive and has mounted two unsuccessful bids for a Connecticut US Senate seat—to lead the Small Business Administration."
"Trump’s relationship with the wrestling world goes back to 1998, when Trump Plaza in Atlantic City first hosted the WWE’s annual spectacle, Wrestlemania. Trump has since been listed as one of the organization’s 'superstars' and inducted into its Hall of Fame, where he is now the first inductee to 'ever hold the distinguished title of US Commander-in-Chief.'"
Sorry, but I will use any excuse to repost this video. Just skip it if vintage WWE doesn't crack you up.
"By some accounts, Steven Cheung, Donald Trump’s principal spokesman, who once said that Trump critics’ 'entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House,' is a pretty nice guy," Clare Malone wrote at The New Yorker last March. 'He has a nickname, Panda, which comes from his old Twitter handle,' Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington Bureau Chief, said, referring to Cheung’s former account on the platform, @CaliforniaPanda. 'He’s big, fluffy, and lovable.' Cheung, who grew up in Sacramento, the son of Chinese immigrants, is forty-one, broad, bespectacled, and bald; Trump reportedly refers to him as 'my sumo wrestler.' 'I like dealing with him,' a reporter who covers the Trump campaign for a mainstream news outlet told me. 'He’s not a white nationalist. He gets back to you. He gets you statements.'"
Pearl-clutchers like to shriek that Trump is un-presidential when he hurls his colorful insults at opponents, and they're not wrong. Historically, American presidents have been politicians for years and often have legal training and Ivy League backgrounds as well. They know how to talk smooth and pretty, and they let their proxies do their rhetorical dirty work.
But Trump was never a politician before becoming president, and his professional rhetoric was forged on construction sites the world over. Given that along with his professional wrestling background — and Cheung's UFC years — and trash talk is simply the sort of speech we get from the 45th and likely 47th president.
Yet these same pearl-clutchers see nothing wrong with the current "president" abusing his office to publicly undermine SCOTUS. I'm old enough to remember when the executive criticizing the judicial branch was a no-no. While Trump's only real deviation from traditional presidential behavior has been his brash talk — a mere style point in the overall scheme of things — the Biden administration has shredded norms from day one.
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