Trump Busts Another Taboo

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, February 12, 2026

 

In May 1907, the Reverend Dr. William J. Long, a prominent naturalist, penned a number of articles lambasting famously rugged President Theodore Roosevelt for his hunting exploits. Throughout his life, Roosevelt was fond of killing bears, deer, and other wild game, a “savage” hobby that Long excoriated. The naturalist claimed that animals were smarter than humans believed them to be and thus deserved more individual respect.

 

Long gave many examples: He spoke of woodcocks that, after breaking a leg, would create a kind of clay cast and stand on the healthy leg until the clay hardened. He said that wolves knew to kill deer by biting their hearts out through the chest, something Roosevelt mocked as both a mental and physical impossibility. Long further claimed that he watched his pet dog eat a live chicken, and when confronted, the dog lay on top of the carcass and pretended to be asleep to hide his crime. A coon dog never has “consciousness of guilt,” claimed naturalist and Roosevelt supporter John Burroughs in a later New York Times essay.

 

Not one to let a slight go unanswered, the bombastic Roosevelt took to the pages of Everybody’s Magazine to ridicule Long. In an interview, he called Long a “nature faker” and “the worst of these nature-writing offenders.” This prompted Long to send the president a letter accusing him of “bad taste” and “cowardice.”

 

“Unfortunately your high position gives weight, even to your foolish words,” Long wrote, adding that Roosevelt’s assertions were “not worth a gentleman’s consideration.”

 

The New York Times attacked Roosevelt for picking a fight with a private citizen, noting that it was unbecoming for a president to use his office to attack a constituent. “It would seem that a President of sportsmanlike ideals, realizing that he could not fight a private citizen on fair grounds, would feel that he could not fight him all,” the paper wrote after Roosevelt broke his earlier promise to leave Long alone.

 

On this point, at least, the New York Times was right. What was once a shocking breach of etiquette now seems like a daily occurrence, with President Trump berating private citizens on a regular basis.

 

Trump loyalists once understood that attacking civilians had generally been off the table. It’s why they took such umbrage at Hillary Clinton in 2016 deeming “half” of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Shots at Trump were all part of the game, of course — but Clinton turning her ire against his supporters was like an irate hockey player dropping his gloves, skating over to the seats, and starting to punch out the fans.

 

Nonetheless, Trump is willing to shout his disdain for rank-and-file Americans from the roof of the White House. Recall that he reposted an AI-created (we suspect) video of himself flying a fighter jet labeled KING TRUMP, from which feces are released on people protesting his actions below.

 

Just this week, Trump used social media to call U.S. Olympic skier Hunter Hess “a real loser” after Hess expressed “mixed emotions” about representing the U.S. given the trouble happening back home.

 

It isn’t, of course, the first time Trump has openly rooted against U.S. athletes. After the American women’s soccer team was eliminated from the World Cup in 2023, Trump blamed the loss on “Crooked Joe Biden,” hammered media-hungry team star Megan Rapinoe for being too “woke,” and announced, “The USA is going to Hell!!!” (As an inspirational rallying cry, it doesn’t quite match “Win one for the Gipper.”)

 

When expected to call for calm and to express compassion for the recently deceased, as a sane president would, Trump goes the other way. After Renee Good and Alex Pretti, protesters against Trump’s aggressive use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct deportations, were fatally shot in the streets of Minneapolis, the first instinct of the administration was to smear the dead as “domestic terrorists.” (Opinions differ greatly on what roles Good and Pretti played in the incidents that led to their deaths, but in both cases, the initial information disseminated by Trump and his administration was wildly inaccurate.)

 

And, of course, Trump spent months attacking poll workers — regular Americans with regular jobs — in his attempt to push election hoaxes in state after state. In Georgia, Trump cited a “crime” committed by “Democrat workers” Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who he claimed had effectively stuffed voting machines for Joe Biden. After receiving death threats, the two poll workers won $146 million in damages against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who had spent nearly a full year falsely accusing them of committing election fraud.

 

Trump weighed in on the Super Bowl halftime show by a popular Spanish-language musician who’s a U.S. citizen, calling the performance a “‘slap in the face’ to our country.” As for comedians who mock Trump on their late-night shows, Trump attacks them on social media and has sent his lackeys out to suggest that their network’s broadcast license should be pulled. Remember the wild accusations against Haitian immigrants in Ohio? The president of the United States eagerly spread a lie that they were stealing and eating America’s house pets. Bark-BQ ribs, anybody?

 

When Trump goes after other politicians and members of the media, it’s obnoxious and coarse, but at least it’s within the bare-knuckle arena in which they all agree to battle. But his barbed attacks against his countrymen outside that arena make TR’s outbursts look almost quaint. Nobody signed up to be roasted by America’s insult-comic-in-chief.