Trump’s Oddjob: the rise of Steven Cheung

Though reporters covering the Trump administration are very familiar with Steven Cheung, the Donald’s combative White House communications director, he’s not a recognizable face to the general public. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt plays good cop, deflecting questions; Cheung is bad cop, trolling the media on X. But Cheung had a moment in the spotlight early this month during a press conference in which Trump announced reduced prices for GLP-1 “fat drugs.” “Where’s Steve?” Trump said. “He’s taking it.”

The press is very familiar with Cheung’s weight issues. When one media outlet compared him to the rather overweight Bond villain Oddjob, Cheung leaned into the racially tinged stereotype and posed for a photo while wearing a bowler hat. Trump himself has called the 43-year-old “my sumo wrestler.” Cheung grew up in Sacramento, the son of Chinese immigrants, and participated in sanctioned amateur sumo wrestling tournaments in the early 2000s. The experience, he said, helped shape his “discipline and competitive spirit.”

Cheung, for whom no job is too odd, has been with Trump since the beginning. He was “director of rapid response” during Trump’s 2016 campaign and has continued to rise through the ranks. He’s also worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elise Stefanik and as a spokesman for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In November of last year, after Trump’s re-election, Cheung posted on Instagram: “It’s been a hell of a ride – a campaign for the ages. We finally finished the story.” Included among the photos with that post was a (presumably AI-generated) image of himself as a blood-spattered UFC fighter sitting on a stool, with a besuited Trump as his cornerman. In the next image, his hands are reaching for Joe Biden’s throat. With Cheung, Trump has definitely chosen his fighter.

Cheung’s greatest hits this year alone have included him saying, over a video of California Senator Adam Schiff, “The camera can’t stabilize because the watermelon head is wobbling precariously on a pencil neck.” He said watching CNN’s Erin Burnett talk about economics “is like watching a donkey try to solve a Rubix Cube.” In August, in the midst of a gerrymandering debate, he called California Governor Gavin Newsom a “coward and a beta cuck” who is “too chicken shit to take questions from the press” – even though Newsom did take questions after the speech. “He’ll never be ready for prime time,” concluded Cheung.

In 2023, he called Ron DeSantis, then Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, a “desperate eunuch.” He branded Kamala Harris a “stone-cold loser who is increasingly desperate because she is flailing and her campaign is in shambles.” Of Biden: “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 ass in front of the world.”

But Cheung saves his harshest vitriol for the press. He hits hard, hits often – and doesn’t like it when people try to hit back. In May, HuffPost reporter S.V. Dáte asked why the White House didn’t make the President’s remarks available on the White House website. Cheung responded: “You must be truly fucking stupid if you think we’re not transparent. The President regularly does multiple press engagements per day and they are streamed live on multiple platforms.”

He already had the upper hand in the argument, but went for the body slam anyway. “We’ve even granted low-level outlets like HuffPo [sic] additional access to events, because we’re so transparent. For anyone to think otherwise proves they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Stop beclowning yourself.”

On Halloween, citing national security concerns, the White House announced that it was restricting press access to communications staff offices, making it by appointment only. Cheung said that reporters had been “eavesdropping” and “secretly recording audio and video,” though he didn’t provide any evidence.

“Some reporters have wandered into restricted areas (our offices are feet away from the Oval Office),” Cheung wrote in a post on X. “Cabinet secretaries routinely come into our office for private meetings, only to be ambushed by reporters waiting outside our doors.” White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang said her organization “unequivocally opposes any effort to limit journalists from areas within the communications operations of the White House that have long been open for newsgathering, including the press secretary’s office.”

Cheung didn’t rise to his current high status in the Trump administration by cozying up to reporters, even if one reporter told the New Yorker last March: “I like dealing with him. He’s not a white nationalist. He gets back to you. He gets you statements.” Regardless, he owes his professional life to unrelenting loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief, who he’ll defend on any topic. When Joanna Coles, chief content officer for the Daily Beast, suggested on CNN in April that President Trump has lost a lot of weight because he’s been taking Ozempic, Cheung responded on X: “CNN had this blithering idiot on @InsidePolitics from the Daily Beast named @JoannaColes making unsubstantiated claims about President Trump’s health. Joanna is a piece of shit, clearly suffering from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome rotting her pea-sized brain.”

That stood in stark difference to Cheung’s public response after Trump outed him as being on “fat drugs.” On that occasion, Cheung said: “It’s important to encourage others to explore options to address health concerns by speaking openly and honestly about it.” All the pea brains, beta cucks and desperate eunuchs surely appreciated his sincere candor.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.