White House Communications Director Steven Cheung on Friday once again used the r-slur, this time lashing out at Daily Beast Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles.
Cheung’s latest outburst was spurred by Coles and Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty discussing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s impending departure, as well as the recent exits of other West Wing staffers. On Friday’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, they offered “personal” and “institutional” causes for Leavitt, 28, leaving, beyond her stated reason of spending more time with her family.
When a Daily Beast reporter reached out to the White House for comment, Cheung, 44, eagerly tapped out the following response: “Joanna Coles is a r----d who has no idea what goes on in the White House.”
Cheung did not immediately reply when informed that the Beast would be drawing attention to his profanity in a separate story.
For Cheung, who has applied the word “r----d” to members of Congress and to a Senate staffer, his gripe with Coles dates back to at least last April, when she questioned President Donald Trump’s alleged weight loss. After Cheung wrote on X that she was “a piece of s--t, clearly suffering from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome rotting her pea-sized brain,” Coles called out his habit of using recycled statements.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the White House has also insulted Daily Beast reporters and the publication in general.
Last January, when a reporter asked about the then-79-year-old president’s health, they were called “mentally ill.” A few months before, Cheung twice misgendered a male reporter in his on-the-record reply. And spokesperson Davis Ingle has responded to inquiries with a line about “lightweight, glue-sniffing ‘reporters.’”
Ingle, who graduated from a university run by his father, on Wednesday called the Beast a “mentally challenged, lightweight operation.”
It’s par for the course for this White House. Leavitt, after all, once shot back at a reporter with the immature taunt, “your mom.”
