The President of the United States Is a Wretched Cur!
Trump’s Insults Toward Rob Reiner and Hardy’s Henchard
A few weeks ago, I penned a piece in which I described the United States President as a “wretched cur!” It was a reference from a novel I was required to read as a high school senior, titled The Mayor of Casterbridge, written by Thomas Hardy, about a once very popular mayor, Michael Henchard, who had fallen out of office and was on hard times. He sold his wife at the town fair. This act is akin to a 21st-century American President burying his first wife on his golf course so he can receive a tax break on the golf course property.
The tragic deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner on December 14, 2025, allegedly at the hands of their son Nick, shocked Hollywood and the wider public. Yet what compounded grief was Donald Trump’s response. Instead of offering condolences, Trump used the moment to berate Reiner in death, attributing his murder to “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and later doubling down by calling him “deranged” and “bad for our country.”
When I wrote that piece, I felt compelled to turn Henchard’s words, therefore, Trump’s words, back on him. “Out of my sight, wretched cur!” Trump is alive, but if I were to pen an Obit at his demise, I think that line from Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge would sum up the sentiment of many people worldwide.
Let’s compare Henchard and Trump.
As Henchard’s public life declines, his protégé, an Irishman named Donald Farfrae, rises in the world of business and politics. Henchard, like Trump, can’t abide the rise of someone he once thought was beneath him, so he latches out at Farfrae with the vilest of language.
This rhetorical move exemplifies Trump’s tendency to weaponize insults, even in contexts that demand compassion. His words sought not only to dismiss Reiner’s political opposition but to destroy his persona in death, reframing a family tragedy as political theater.
What can we learn from Hardy’s overarching theme in The Mayor of Casterbridge?
Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge offers a literary parallel. Michael Henchard, once a respected mayor, descends into bitterness and jealousy. His insult— “Out of my sight, wretched cur!”—directed at his rival Donald Farfrae, is not strategic but impulsive. Hardy shows how Henchard’s vindictive language overreaches: it does not merely wound Farfrae, it corrodes Henchard himself. The insult becomes a mirror, reflecting Henchard’s unraveling character and accelerating his downfall.
Hardy’s theme is clear: vindictive language destroys not only the target’s dignity but also the speaker’s moral standing. The overreach lies in the attempt to annihilate another’s persona, which inevitably exposes the speaker’s own flaws.
Both Trump and Henchard demonstrate the destructive overreach of vindictive language. Trump’s berating of Rob Reiner in death shows how insult can corrode the dignity of leadership, while Hardy’s Henchard illustrates how insult corrodes the dignity of the self. In both cases, the attempt to destroy another’s persona ultimately diminishes the speaker most of all.
Given the “wretched cur’s” remarks at the killing of beloved actor and producer Rob Reiner, is it appropriate to write about how snarled and knotted the mind of the “wretched cur” is when he sleeps? Should journalists who describe the “wretched cur” in death as the miserable facsimile of a human that he is lose their jobs, as many did on reporting on the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in death as in life, there is no good way to describe Trump. Any attempt to do so at his demise would torture the English language to the point of making it unrecognizable. How can the country mourn and honor a life full of bombast, manure, and self-loathing without defining itself as bombastic, full of manure, and stuck on itself? Why bother to lower the flag or give a 21-gun salute?
Without malice or vindictiveness, “Out of my sight, wretched cur!”
!!!!
Thank you Michael,
'Nuf Said!
Gabby
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