Trump might be a demagogue but he is no threat to the republic

Troy Bramston ignores history with his doomsday theory that Donald Trump is a demagogue whose legacy will destroy the American republic and with it the American people (“Fathers saw this populist president coming”, 27/10).

In 27BC Octavian dismantled the Roman republic to become the first emperor, the demagogue Augustus Caesar. Under the reign of the emperors, the Romans kept the Senate and during the following 400 years gave the Western world its lasting legacy in the rule of law, sovereign borders, trade and immigration policy and an engineering genius that underpins our democratic society’s public and private institutions today.

Trump has signalled his intent not to mess with the rule of law or the separation of powers and gave America prior to COVID a booming economy, whereas his opponents are threatening to stack the Supreme Court, abolish the Senate and become a socialist state, opening the borders to give illegal immigrants voting rights.

On all the evidence, Trump is the most republican populist demagogue of all.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

Troy Bramston’s report about historian Joseph Ellis labelling Donald Trump a demagogue is insulting to those who voted for Trump, and is a reminder of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”. It is also a denial of what has been said about Trump, that his supporters laugh at his speech but take his actions seriously, while his detractors take his speech seriously while ignoring his actions.

His supporters do laugh at his bellicose hyperbole, but take seriously what he has done on the international stage, something his predecessors failed to do. He has fulfilled one of his campaign pledges and has not sent their children, the children of the middle and lower classes, to die needlessly in unnecessary, expensive and unproductive foreign interventions.

It is these manifestations of American might in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya and elsewhere that have tarnished the US’s reputation, far more than anything Trump has said.

Patrick Hanrahan, Floreat, WA

I rarely miss Troy Bramston’s writing or his speaking, but I confess to being disappointed in his attack on Donald Trump, with so much based on Joseph Ellis’s thoughts.

Where is even a vague mention that Nancy Pelosi is utterly rude and self-centred and unapproachable in terms of a decent exchange of thoughts regarding the House and Senate differences? Where is any mention of the Democrats never, ever accepting that DJT was elected for a four-year term? They never stopped trying to overturn that election — surely that is divisive?

Does he see as divisive the inordinate amount of money George Soros plays with for his global dream that Trump rails against? Does he question the power of Facebook and Twitter to decide what the public can watch, if there is something a little questionable about someone related to Joe Biden?

Disappointing, coming as it does, from one of my favourite writers

Maggie Morrison, Mordialloc, Vic

The great unknown

Britta Schaffelke (Letters, 26/10) claims the Australian Institute of Marine Science “continues to collect and measure coral cores from the reef for specific research questions”, but failed to mention that it has published no measurements of a reef-average coral growth rate since 2005, and the data from 1990-2005 is highly questionable.

We have the scandalous situation where we have data from 1570-2005, but nothing for the past 15 years. A group of farmers from North Queensland invited AIMS to a public forum where this and other matters were to be debated. AIMS refused to attend. It is clearly not confident in its own arguments.

Peter Ridd, Townsville, Qld