Is this leadership?

Apparently, President Donald Trump’s idea of leadership on national problems has gone from ignoring them (“It’s going to disappear ... like a miracle”) to actively making them worse (“Slow the testing down, please.”).

He opposes properly funding the U.S. Postal Service for the express purpose of interfering with people’s right to vote by mail. He seems willing to stall the pandemic relief bill if it contains the funding needed to handle the expected flood of mail-in ballots. Just to make it worse, his postmaster general appears to be taking steps to slow down the mail.

Instead of directing our national security agencies to aggressively oppose Russia’s interference in the 2020 election (on his behalf), the president interfered by frequently replacing their leadership. Just to make sure Vladimir Putin knows he is appreciated, Mr. Trump won’t even mention Russia’s bounties on U.S. soldiers and is pulling U.S. troops out of Germany.

On trade, he appears to be ignoring our Pacific Rim allies, while putting tariffs on some aluminum products that even Alcoa said were disrupting the market without solving the problem. A farmer describes how his “farm has been shaken by retaliatory Chinese tariffs that were a direct consequence of the president’s trade war.”

Instead of helping to broker a comprehensive deal with Congress to help with the health and economic crisis, Mr. Trump inexplicably decided to “help” the still-employed workers by not collecting their payroll taxes now, leaving them with large tax bills to be paid later.

This is leadership?

TOM ELLERMAN Austin, Texas

The writer is a former resident of Brackenridge.