ADDRESSING a baying mob of un-socially-distanced adoring supporters, in front of a backdrop of numerous American flags at a Republican rally held (against all convention – pun intended) on the lawns of the White House, an increasingly delusional Donald Trump had the unmitigated gall to declare that he had “‘done more for Black Americans than any President since Abraham Lincoln”.

Try telling that to any of the millions of poorer (for the most part black or other minority ethnic groups) whose access to healthcare was one of the first things that Trump removed on entering the White House.

He also told his audience that electing the Democrat Party candidate, Joe Biden, would lead to a breakdown of law and order and put an end to the American Dream.

Pretty rich (again, pun intended) coming from a man who has used his position to pardon at least 25 of well-connected friends and cronies charged with and/or convicted of, federal criminal offences.

Watching him declare that he “profoundly accepted the Republican nomination” in that setting brought to mind (although on a lesser scale) Hitler’s ranting addresses to Nazi party faithful in Nuremberg.

Should Trump be re-elected (God forbid) in November, I suspect that 2020 will not be remembered so much as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic but as the year that an uneducated, money-grubbing, dishonest, misogynistic, xenophobic, delusional egotist was voted a second term as president of the most powerful and wealthiest nation on earth.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth