The world can’t wait for Donald Trump to leave office | Letters

Mary Evans, Aidan Walker and Ruth Baker on Simon Jenkins’ suggestion for how to deal with the US president Phoebe Merrick and John Spencer on religion and war, Rev Canon John Longuet-Higgins on Trump’s expletive-laden threat to Iran, and Diana Francis on US bases in Britain

Simon Jenkins is perhaps a little overoptimistic in arguing for what is essentially a waiting game about the politics of Donald Trump and his administration (To a world at a loss as to how to handle Trump, I say this: the only answer may be to wait him out, 2 April). Trump and those alongside him have effectively diminished or abolished central tenets of the legal and civic structure of the US. Not least to have disappeared in this bonfire is that political cliche about the checks and balances over political power. That basic tenet of every political handbook about the US has proved to be a vain hope.

Waiting for the downfall of one individual surely suggests that we should ask two questions. First, will others, perhaps less personally flawed but nevertheless of the same politics, simply take his place? Second, if the country (and a lot of the rest of the world) wishes to go in another direction, when can we see the plan?