Pugilistic Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung is heading to the White House to be communications director, the president-elect announced on Friday.

Cheung, a former spokesperson for the Ultimate Fighting Championship — the popular mixed martial arts league — brought a cage fighter's spirit to speaking on behalf of Trump on the campaign trail.

For example, during the campaign, Cheung in a statement called Vice President Harris a "stone cold loser" and blamed her rhetoric for the assassination attempts on Trump.

He wrote that author and longtime Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward was a "truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome," and the insults went on from there.

Cheung regularly attributed backlash to Trump statements to "Trump Derangement Syndrome" as a way to deflect controversy. In the final days of the 2024 campaign when Trump said he wouldn't mind so much if an assassin had to shoot through the press corps to get to him, Cheung said he certainly wasn't calling for anyone to be shot.

He said that Trump had been suggesting that the media should also be surrounded by bulletproof glass. "There can be no other interpretation of what was said," Cheung said in a campaign statement. "He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!"

Despite his hyperbolic official statements, Cheung is a communications professional who was known for having a generally pragmatic working relationship with reporters covering the Trump campaign.

Cheung worked on both of Trump's previous campaigns and worked in the White House for part of Trump's first term. He grew up in Sacramento, Calif., and worked on several mainstream Republican campaigns before joining up with Trump.

Copyright 2024 NPR