Donald Trump has been accusing the media of presenting his words in the most negative connotations possible since the beginning of his presidential campaign, and now he’s taking extra steps to fight back against bad publicity by hiring the public-affairs director from the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The Trump campaign recently hired Steven Cheung to be the campaign’s Director of Rapid Response, whose focus will be on “keeping the campaign up to date on breaking news and pushing back on false or unbalanced reporting.”
Cheung most recently worked as director of communications – Public Affairs for Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The UFC is no stranger to controversy. Past the obvious damage control needed when dealing with a sport that is legalized face punching, the organization employs more than 600 athletes that have been implicated in every kind of scandal imaginable from performance enhancing drugs to murder and sexual assault. Even fighters who were removed from the league long ago are often referred to as UFC fighters in headlines when they do something wrong, with the most recent major example being Jon ‘War Machine’ Koppenhaver when he brutally assaulted porn star Christy Mack.
Whether Trump hired Cheung based on his resume or a recommendation from UFC president Dana White is unclear. Trump and White share a friendship that goes back to the early days of the UFC when Trump welcomed the sport to Atlantic City.
“Donald Trump was the first one to have us come out at the Trump Taj Mahal,” White said during a recent interview. “Not only did we host the events there, but he actually showed up and supported the events. You will never hear me say a negative thing about Donald Trump. … Donald will get my vote.”
The Donald recently said he was interested in having White among others at his Republican National Convention ‘winners evening.’ On his appearance last month on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, White said the two were supposed to have dinner soon and maybe an official invitation would be extended. Perhaps it was at this dinner that Cheung was put forward as a way to deal with the click-bait media and weasel reporters. And yeah, those are Dana White’s words, not Donald Trump.