Simon Jenkins may be correct in identifying issues against which Donald Trump’s ire has some legitimacy (Yes, Donald Trump is a monster. But his agenda isn’t all bad, 16 February), but despite listing his many faults, Jenkins offers a level of credibility for the “revolutionary” Trump that is sorely misplaced. Like so many commentators currently trying to disentangle legitimate messages from its maniacal medium (Trump is no fascist. He is a champion for the forgotten millions, 5 February), he fails to recognise that the maniac is not redeemed by occasionally fulminating against deserving targets. Neither is it the case that exuberant iconoclasm makes a coherent revolutionary. When no one any longer knows what is the official US line on Russia or a two-state solution to Israel-Palestine, it is necessary to ask serious questions of the author of that confusion. Thus, while we are of course concerned with “where the leader of the western world is heading”, it is the very fact of his megalomania, rather than any valid items on his agenda, that makes the question so urgent and imponderable.

Paul McGilchrist

Colchester, Essex

• That Simon Jenkins draws any kind of parallel between Lenin and Donald Trump is barmy. Worst is his assertion that Lenin said “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”. Lenin never said any such thing, and certainly not in the sense implied, of deliberate cynical manipulation. The entire Bolshevik politics were those of exposing lies for the truth, as for example in publishing the secret treaties of the first world war (like Sykes-Picot, still causing troubles). If anything remotely similar to such words were written, and I challenge anyone to find the quote in 50 volumes of published works and publish them in context, it would have been only in the sense of explaining how the bourgeoisie do things, in order to expose them.

Don Hoskins

London

• “Donald Trump is a monster. But his agenda isn’t all bad,” Says Simon Jenkins. But here’s the thing: there are plenty of non-monsters with not-bad agendas. Trump’s head is too full of Trump to have any kind of meaningful agenda. The voices of Trump apologists now sound, to me, exactly like the voices of Iraq invasion apologists then.

Andrew Williamson

Lewes, East Sussex

• Simon Jenkins isn’t the first to flag up the Leninist aspects of President Trump’s approach to politics. Without subscribing to theories of history repeating itself this notion leads to the chilling question: if Trump is Lenin then who will be Stalin?

Michael Loftus

Kidderminster

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