Readers respond to the US president’s visit to the Nato summit and the UK, including his demand for more defence spending and his undiplomatic interventions in British politics

Is Trump, as you write, the “leader of a very great nation” (Donald Trump says the UK likes him a lot. We don’t. He is an unwelcome visitor, 13 July)? That needs consideration. The historian Tony Judt, in his last book, Ill Fares the Land, concluded with: “And then came the ’90s: the first of two lost decades during which fantasies of prosperity and limitless personal advancement displaced all talk of political liberation, social justice or collective action … Under Clinton and Blair, the Atlantic world stagnated smugly.” And of course the “dangerous mischief in the domestic and regional politics of countless parts of the world” your editorial attributes to Trump long precedes him.

So how great is America? And why have we been so seduced by its culture, social, political and economic? Could it be something to do with where the money is, and isn’t? To quote Judt again: “Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within.” The now unlikely trade deal with America was arguably the only serious objective of the Brexiteers – its purpose to clinch the profitable, for some, unregulated corporate control of what used to be our democracy. Trump is unwelcome, but Trump is simply the epitome of a rootless, lost society which we do still seem to like a lot.

John Airs

Liverpool

• Your editorial (To do business, Mr Trump, you need a rules-based order that can be policed, 11 July) claims that the Nato alliance “has … ushered in a democratic, liberal world order characterised by open trade and open societies”. Even if we leave aside the aggressive stance of Nato towards the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia, this hardly squares with the repressive domestic actions of national militaries within Nato.

In Greece in 1967 the military seized power from the democratic government and instituted a seven-year dictatorship. In Turkey the army overthrew the elected government in 1960 and in 1980; in the latter case tens of thousands of trade unionists and leftists were imprisoned, tortured or murdered. The Turkish army has for 70 years carried out genocidal repression of Turkish Kurds, and more recently of Syrian Kurds. Democratic and liberal?

Jamie Gough

Sheffield

• How ironic that that Trump should demand that Europe contribute more to its own defence (Trump is right. Nato is a costly white elephant, 13 July). In 1763 Britain was victorious but bankrupt after winning the seven years’ war and levied taxes on its 13 American colonies as a contribution to their own costly defence. Now the US is demanding that Nato members double their contribution to US-provided defence. Given the “no taxation without representation” principle, shouldn’t Nato members insist they will pay only if given elected seats in the US Congress?

Dr Bill Jones

Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

• I has to smile at the front cover of Friday’s paper (Trump tells May: soft Brexit will ‘kill’ UK hopes of US trade pact, 13 July). Theresa May’s rather pleading expression put me in mind of Yosser Hughes from that iconic 80s TV series Boys from the Blackstuff: “Gizza deal, we can do that.”

Judith Daniels

Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

• I suggest our prime minister should adopt the approach taken to foreign interference in sovereign business by Trump’s illustrious predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, when in 1965 the then prime minister of Canada, Lester Pearson, at a meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, spoke against the US intervention in Vietnam then ratcheting up disastrously. President Johnson issued Pearson with a cordial invitation to meet him at Camp David. On arrival LBJ grabbed the Canadian PM by the lapels and warned him: “Don’t you come down here pissin on ma rug.”

Neil Henderson

Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

• On an official visit to Canada in 1967, President de Gaulle made a public speech that was seen (and intended) as a blatant interference in Canadian domestic politics. Prime minister Lester Pearson firmly rebuked him, and de Gaulle’s visit ended abruptly. A government less craven than Theresa May’s would have sent Trump packing.

Anthony Carew

Marple Bridge, Greater Manchester

• The hymns chosen for the medley welcoming Trump to Blenheim have lyrics that are highly relevant to improving his behaviour: “Dear Lord and Father of mankind, / Forgive our foolish ways! / Reclothe us in our rightful mind / In purer lives Thy service find.” And then several verses of prayer for calm and gentleness; and Amazing Grace was written by a repentant racist.

Maybe a message here?

Sara Meadows

Bristol

• Donald Trump saying that Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister is the kiss of death for Johnson’s hopes. Remember what happened after Barack Obama tried to influence the British to vote to stay in the EU by saying that we would have to get to the back of the queue when doing deals with the US? The majority voted for Brexit.

Frances Coombes

London

• You note that when President Woodrow Wilson came here in 1918 he gave an exclusive interview to the Guardian (Editorial, 13 July). 100 years, on President Trump has done the same, but in the Sun. Progress in history is a complicated matter.

Keith Flett

London

• John Crace’s sketch should have come with a health warning (I’m the busiest, funniest president in the world…, 13 July). I laughed so much I honestly thought it was going to run down both legs at one point.

Ian Garner

Keighley, West Yorkshire

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