Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed communications chief had a demented meltdown after a former Obama diplomat flagged the absence of any actual China expert on Air Force One to Beijing.
The 79-year-old president took off on Tuesday for his first official trip to China since returning to the Oval Office, surrounded by a sprawling entourage of family members, billionaire CEOs, and assorted hangers-on. The three-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping will feature two bilateral sessions and a state banquet.
The passenger manifest included Trump’s son Eric, daughter-in-law Lara, Apple boss Tim Cook, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and bosses from Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, and Visa, among others.
Also on board was Melania documentary director Brett Ratner, who quit Hollywood in disgrace after multiple women, including actress Olivia Munn, accused him of sexual assault.
On Tuesday, NewsNation’s White House correspondent Libbey Dean posted a “partial” list of attendees provided by the White House. On it were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is so disliked in Beijing that he’s been sanctioned twice, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was deeply involved in implementing the tariffs on China but has no China-diplomacy expertise—and Cheung, who used to do PR for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
What that list notably did not contain, according to Brett Bruen, was any official with the background to advise the president on the country he was about to visit.
“Not a single China expert,” Bruen posted on X on Tuesday. “POTUS would normally have at least one NSC/State official to provide briefings. Underlines how utterly unprepared he is for meetings with Xi.”
Bruen would know. He served as White House director of global engagement under President Barack Obama and spent 12 years as a U.S. diplomat, working frontline assignments in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Guinea, Iraq, Venezuela, Argentina, Zambia, and Eritrea.
He now teaches crisis communications at Georgetown University, runs the Washington consultancy Global Situation Room, and was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the country’s most influential voices on public affairs.
Those credentials did not impress Cheung, 43, who may have already been annoyed at Bruen, after he told the South China Morning Post on Saturday that Xi might seek to “exploit” and “manipulate” Trump over his “weakness on the domestic front.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about you slope-brained, mouth breathing moron,” the White House communications director snapped back three hours later. “Stop calling yourself an expert in anything, aside from sucking. Anyone that hires you (not many!) should get an immediate refund and payment for wasting their time.”
Cheung, 43, is also not seemingly an expert in much, either. The Sacramento native enrolled at California State University but never completed a degree, then began his political career as an intern in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office. He bounced through a string of losing Republican campaigns—John McCain’s failed 2008 White House bid, Steve Poizner in California, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and David Dewhurst in Texas—before his career peak ahead of the Trump White House, a stint spinning for UFC.
He joined the Trump operation in 2016, made it into the first-term White House as an assistant communications director, and was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in June 2018, before becoming the director of communications for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and returning to the executive mansion for Trump 2.0.
The juvenile name-calling has since become a signature of Cheung, as the Beast has regularly reported. He has branded Sen. Richard Blumenthal “Da Nang D---head,” Stephen Colbert a “sad and pathetic excuse for a human being” and an “entitled p---k,” and Jimmy Kimmel a “sad, angry, and insufferable idiot.”
Trump biographer Michael Wolff has been smeared as a “lying sack of s--t” with a “peanut-sized brain,” George Clooney was accused of “war crimes” for his acting, and the Beast’s chief content officer, Joanna Coles, was tagged a “piece of s--t” after she questioned Trump’s weight loss claims on CNN.
Wolff has previously told the Beast that Cheung’s serial outbursts are pure theater aimed at an “audience of one,” and that he “issues these kinds of vituperative comments, which Trump likes.”
The trip to Beijing—the first by a sitting U.S. president since Trump visited in 2017—comes after Trump’s second-term tariff war with China backfired horribly, with China-watchers warning that Xi is now holding all the cards heading into the summit.
The Daily Beast went for comment to the White House and Bruen, who said: “White House Communications Directors focus on the big stuff and the most serious threats to their message. So, clearly pointing out the President’s poor preparation for this trip hit a sensitive spot. Perhaps because it’s such a perennial problem that allows leaders from Beijing to Moscow to outmaneuver Trump.”
He added: “My suggestion would be less time posting sophmoric stuff on X and more spent on strategic messaging for the state visit, so the Administration can have more to show for it than the last few amateurish attempts at high stakes diplomacy.”
