Top communications official Steven Cheung had a signature tantrum after Jimmy Kimmel called his boss’s State of the Union address an “angry” ramble.
On Wednesday, Cheung, 43, lashed out when responding to the late-night host’s Tuesday night monologue. Kimmel ripped apart President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and in retaliation, Cheung resurfaced one of the most heinous parts of the ABC star’s past—Kimmel’s repeated dressing in blackface in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“Jimmy Kimmel is a sad, angry, and insufferable idiot who probably didn’t even watch the speech and is recycling his tired, ineffective material,” Cheung wrote on X. “Reminder: Jimmy dressed in blackface.”
Cheung included a photo of the late-night host using blackface makeup for his impression of basketball player Karl Malone in a comedic sketch for The Man Show, a Comedy Central series he co-starred in during the early 2000s.
In 2020, Kimmel apologized for his past use of blackface while performing impressions of Black celebrities, which also included Oprah Winfrey, saying it was “embarrassing.” Many critics found Kimmel’s apology statements insufficient.
“I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last 20-plus years, and I hope that is evident to anyone who watches my show,” Kimmel said in a statement. “I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me.”
In the Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue from Tuesday night that sent Cheung into a rage, Kimmel referred to Trump’s record-setting 108-minute address to the nation as a “Burger King speech,” highlighting how “angry” it was.
“The theme of tonight’s speech was, ‘All foreigners are murderers,’” Kimmel, 58, said. “Trump said zero illegal aliens have been allowed into the United States on his watch. But the door is always open to those who come in legally to be his next wife.”
“He bragged about ending DEI, he bragged about kicking two million people off food stamps, it was like a Christmas message from the Grinch,” he joked.
“When you ramble mostly incoherently for two hours, is that technically still a speech? Or does it, at some point, become a conniption?”
The Daily Beast reached out to Kimmel’s reps for comment.
Cheung, whom Trump outed as a user of “fat drugs” and has reportedly called “my sumo wrestler,” frequently uses his X account to defend his boss and other Trump administration officials.
The White House Communications Director called out “The Boss,” legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen, last week for comments he made about Trump being a “wannabe king.”
“When this loser Springsteen comes back home to his own City of Ruins in his head, he’ll realize his Glory Days are behind him and his fans have left him Out in the Street, putting him in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out because he has a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his brain,” he told Politico’s Playbook in a statement.
Cheung also rushed to the defense of FBI Director Kash Patel after his wild weekend partying with the gold medal-winning USA men’s Olympic hockey team drew criticism for celebrating on the taxpayers’ dime.
“Carol, you’re either mentally deficient or a liar,” he wrote in response to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Carol Leonnig, who reported Patel’s boozy celebration video in the USA locker room.
“This ‘exclusive’ video your ‘sources’ sent you is actually from a publicly available Instagram story,” he continued. “Second, Kash was also in Italy meeting with regional partners and security teams.”
“Third, don’t be mad because America won,” he concluded.
