Trump Finally Found A Real Life John Barron— Meet Steven Cheung, AKA "Panda"

Right out of college— with all my friends headed off to medical school or law school or grad school— I headed off to India. I sold some hash and paid for a VW van and then flew to Europe and picked it up at the factory in Germany and started driving, first all over Europe, then to Morocco and, after the Isle of Wight festival, across Asia, through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Ceylon and Nepal. What a trip… and then back to Europe and eventually my first job as an adult: working in a macrobiotic restaurant in a meditation center in Amsterdam. Seven years later I got my “real” first job: working in a p.r. firm in San Francisco. I learned a lot about publicity in the year I worked there. And as much as I detest Trump and everything about him and everything about his enablers… they really are masters of the p.r. world— and everything dark and evil about it.

Yesterday, the New Yorker ran an informative essay on Steven Cheung by Clare Malone, The Face Of Donald Trump’s Deceptively Savvy Media Strategy. Long ago, Trump invented p.r. agents to brag about him to the New York press— John Miller and, later, John Barron. He no longer needs to; now he has Panda— the 41 year old publicist who Señor T calls “my sumo wrestler.” Reporters covering the Trump campaign like dealing with him. One said, “He’s not a white nationalist. He gets back to you. He gets you statements.”

A little aside before we dive in— while pandas are not typically aggressive towards humans and are more likely to avoid confrontations, it's important to remember that they are wild animals and should be treated with caution and respect, especially in their natural habitat. Despite their cute and fluffy appearance, pandas are large and powerful animals. Adult pandas weigh up to 300 pounds, sometimes more, and they have strong jaws and sharp claws that they can use for self-defense. Like all bears, pandas have a strong protective instinct, particularly when it comes to defending their territory or their young. If they feel threatened or cornered, pandas may become aggressive and use their strength to defend themselves. During the mating season, male pandas become more aggressive as they compete for mates, sometimes leading to confrontations between rival males, as well as potentially dangerous behavior towards humans or other animals that are perceived as threats. While generally calm, even docile, their behavior can be unpredictable, especially in unfamiliar or stressful situations.

But, even by the standards of modern American politics, Cheung’s rhetoric can be shocking. “It’s downright bewildering why [Ron DeSantis] would cuck himself in front of the entire country who clearly doesn’t want him as president,” an official campaign statement that went out from Cheung last September read. In another, Cheung referenced the Trump campaign’s theory that DeSantis’s signature cowboy boots disguised high-heel lifts: “Ron shuffled his feet and gingerly walked across the debate set like a 10 year old girl who had just raided her mom’s closet and discovered heels for the first time.” In a comment to the New York Post, Cheung called DeSantis a “desperate eunuch.” By comparison, his statements about Nikki Haley were kinder: “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.” At another point, he called her “an embarrassment to herself,” adding, “Everything she’s ever achieved will be thrown into a dumpster fire that she lit herself.”

Cheung’s Janus-faced act— as a public combatant of “fake news” and a privately acquiescing operative— reflects Trump’s own complicated relationship with the political press, one that is now more than a decade old. The former President has made an outward disdain for the mainstream media a key tenet of his political movement. He is currently suing ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for defamation; NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard was barred from a Trump event in New Hampshire. And yet the former President is an obsessive consumer of his own press coverage— and he knows the power of maintaining access to reporters. Cheung has worked on all three Trump campaigns, though he became a part of the former President’s inner sanctum only at the start of the 2024 race. Jason Miller, one of the campaign’s senior advisers, told me that Cheung’s style is a natural fit with Trump’s. “There’s no ramp-up time,” Miller said. “There’s no learning each other or trying to understand how President Trump is going to communicate or what he’s going to want his team to do to support his efforts.”

Trump has always delighted in belittling opponents— Lyin’ Ted, Liddle Marco, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe— and Cheung, a former spokesman for the mixed-martial-arts franchise, Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a virtuoso at mimicking his boss, voicing all manner of innuendo and humiliating barbs. “He can be pretty offensive and crass online, and I think that’s a tactical thing,” one newspaper reporter who has dealt with Cheung said. “They’re a brutal operation— ‘You come at us and we’re going to kick you in your fucking teeth.’”

…One of the campaign’s initial challenges was to dispense with Trump’s GOP rivals, namely Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, for whom Wiles had previously worked. Cheung’s brutal treatment of DeSantis was part of a deterrence strategy. “‘You should get out of this race or we’re going to ruin you for 2028’” is how the newspaper reporter put it. During the primaries, Cheung sent out statements under the rubric Kiss of Death, which were written more in the style of a partisan Reddit poster than a communications professional. Asawin Suebsaeng, a senior political reporter at Rolling Stone, recalled seeing a statement from Cheung that made multiple allusions to DeSantis soiling himself. “I told him that his delivery reminds me less of a conventional political operative and more of the Chester Ming character in The Wolf of Wall Street, ” Suebsaeng told me. “I did not entirely mean it as a compliment, but I don’t think he took much offense to the notion.”

But Cheung’s public invective also concealed a savvy media strategy: Trump purported to be against the media, but he and his campaign were careful to maintain good relations with many reporters. By contrast, the DeSantis campaign spurned the traditional press, both publicly and privately, and instead courted conservative influencers. His chief spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, whose previous experience included working as an adviser to the former President of Georgia, once tweeted out screenshots of a reporter’s e-mails requesting comment along with belittling commentary; in the summer of 2021, her Twitter account was temporarily suspended after the Associated Press complained that she was harassing one of its journalists online.

Now that the general-election season is under way, a number of reporters I spoke to said that the Trump operation has, in some ways, been easier to deal with than the Biden campaign. “The Biden people have a different expectation from the press,” the newspaper reporter said. “If you write something critical about them, it’s always, like, ‘But Trump!,’ or, ‘Are you on Trump’s side?’ ” Similarly, the mainstream-news reporter said that the Biden team “cannot take a punch. They’re always furious over these tiny things because they kind of expect you to be on their side, like, ‘We’re fighting for reproductive rights for women.’ The Trump people don’t expect a ton of fair stories— there’s a certain type of story they’ll get mad at, but they can also just take a lot of hits.” Both reporters emphasized that they have written many stories that were critical of Trump. “You can have decent relationships with Trump people if you tell them what you’re doing and you’re transparent about your reporting process and they have a chance to respond,” the newspaper reporter said.

Still, although the Trump campaign can seem unfazed by stories that might otherwise read as damaging— a piece about Trump’s plans to pursue mass deportations, for instance, is a net good, since it makes the candidate look tough— anything that might make Trump look weak or guided by others is met with ire. Late last year, The Times and the Washington Post  quoted Republicans outside of the campaign’s orbit discussing how a second Trump Administration would use its powers. In response, the campaign released a statement from Wiles and LaCivita: “Unless a second term priority is articulated by President Trump himself, or is officially communicated by the campaign, it is not authorized in any way.” The newspaper reporter told me, “This iteration of Trump World is obsessed with not having palace-intrigue stories.” The campaign is also wary of stories that might make Trump look too extreme, or even overtly racist. In November, 2022, just a week after Trump launched his campaign, Ye brought the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Boyle, at Breitbart, pointed out that the campaign was quick to respond to the ensuing outcry, issuing a statement from Trump: “Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”

Recent reports that the ex-President has privately expressed support for a sixteen-week ban on abortion rankled some campaign staff. “They want to run Trump as a moderate on abortion,” Suebsaeng said. (On Wednesday, Trump suggested that he would favor a fifteen-week ban.) But, on the whole, the campaign seems to prefer an election that is less focussed on policy issues. “HELP! MY DIAPER IS FULL!” Cheung recently tweeted, alongside a photo of Biden speaking at a podium. A campaign statement attributed to Cheung linked to a video of Biden meandering through a crowded room and described the President as “a short-circuited Roomba. Not even with help does he know what’s going on or where he is.” When Biden’s director of rapid response tweeted a taunting statement about a glitching live stream on Trump’s Truth Social account, Cheung responded, “Looks like your internet connection is shitty and you should invest in better campaign infrastructure, bitch.” As another longtime campaign reporter said of Cheung, “He’ll do whatever Trump says. There are lines that are crossed that delight Trump but wouldn’t get you a job elsewhere. Cheung isn’t thinking beyond Trump.”