A humble item of clothing has sent Donald Trump’s director of communications into full-on meltdown mode at the White House.
Steven Cheung tore into Jack Smith in an X post after the former special counsel, who previously investigated criminal allegations against the president, was photographed at an anti-Trump concert wearing a “No Kings” protest T-shirt.
“Jack Smith is a scumbag who was the partisan attack rat for Democrats who weaponized the justice system against President Trump for political purposes,” Cheung wrote. “Don’t think they won’t go after innocent Americans again if they get their way.”
Cheung, 44, regularly uses his platform to launch attacks at public figures critical of the president. In Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has brought investigations and attempted to prosecute several of the president’s political enemies.
Smith’s T-shirt was from the merch line for anti-Trump rocker Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour, during which Springsteen was often explicitly critical of the second Trump administration.
The former special counsel, 57, wore the shirt while attending the “Power to the People” festival in Maryland, organized by Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, also a fervent Trump critic.
The Biden administration appointed Smith to lead a probe into Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and another into allegations that Trump kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly attacked Smith over those investigations, neither of which ever made it to court, and suggested he should go to jail for what they say amounted to political persecution. Since the president returned to office, Republican lawmakers have now brought Smith in for hearings about the probes on three occasions.
The former special counsel has remained defiant throughout those sessions, telling senators last Tuesday that “if asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or a Democrat.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Smith and the White House for comment on this story.
