The Wild Backstory Behind Trumpworld’s Newest Toadie
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Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
Donald Trump’s inner circle is a revolving door of wild and wacky characters—and almost as interesting as the former president’s rapidly changing whims are the people he keeps around to carry them out.
This week, The New Abnormal introduces you to a relatively new face in the pantheon of Trumpworld toadies: Steven Cheung, Trump’s principal spokesperson and de facto enforcer.
He comes to Trumpworld by way of the Ultimate Fighting Championship–commonly known as the UFC–where he served a similar role following his work as a low-level political operative for years in Washington.
“I mean, you come after Donald Trump, this guy is coming after you,” said journalist Michael Sokolove, who recently wrote a piece on Cheung for Mother Jones called “How Trump’s 2024 Campaign Became a Bloody Cage Fight.”
“There are no rules of political engagement as we used to know them that Cheung will not violate,” he added. “As a wordsmith, you know, there’s an extreme brutality and coarseness and grossness to what he sends out into the political universe.”
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Plus, a conversation with New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant about a largely forgotten 1873 law, called the Comstock Act, that could be used to outlaw virtually all abortions across America.
Trump’s Stance on Abortion Is Likely to Change Come November
“It has been fascinating and horrifying to see how quickly [far-right legal interpretations of the Comstock Act] went from something that was kind of fringy with these anti-abortion activists in Texas… then from there we see it pop up in Project 2025,” Grant said. “Then from there we see it at the Supreme Court. It’s only taken about two years, I think, to get to this level of prominence.”
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
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