You report that Donald Trump claims that the only thing limiting his power as commander-in-chief is his “own morality” (‘I don’t need international law’: Trump says power constrained only by ‘my own morality’, 8 January). A lifetime’s evidence of that morality at work makes this position chilling. Courts and juries have found him guilty of falsifying business records, liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and responsible for misusing charitable funds for political ends. These are not partisan judgments, but evidence-based legal findings reached after due process.
The consistent pattern is not of any sort of moral restraint, but self-licensing. For him, truth is merely tactical. Rules and conventions are obeyed when convenient, but ignored when obstructive. He resists accountability. When challenged, his response is almost always to retaliate.
This is the morality he offers as a substitute for international law, which merely confirms why international law exists in the first place – to restrain those leaders who live by their own judgment, not by any external standard.
Anthony Lawton
Church Langton, Leicestershire
• Peter Mandelson suggests that Europe should be “accepting that Trump’s decisive approach when faced with real-world situations is preferable to the hand-wringing and analysis paralysis that has characterised some previous US administrations” (Mandelson accuses European leaders of ‘histrionic’ reaction to Trump’s Greenland stance, 8 January). Some of the hand‑wringing may derive from a dawning realisation that Trump and his administration are proto-fascist.
Thus far the coercion of citizens has generally been by legal and financial means, rather than overt violence, but there is an undercurrent of fear of violence by Trump’s more extreme supporters and by ICE. Books are banned, data disappears from US federal websites, US law is ignored, the 2020 election result is disputed. Inconvenient facts are described as “fake news”. What are clearly lies are presented as the truth.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, etc. It’s as though commentators can’t quite believe that the US is heading towards the F(ascism) word.
John Newton
Burgess Hill, West Sussex
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
