Is Obama to blame for Trump’s rise?

The author of the article Barack Obama’s failures gave America Donald Trump (January 24) has judged Barack Obama on his international policies, which I agree were not the best.

However, the people who elected Donald Trump based their decision not on his international policies but on his national economic policies. Ironically, the national economy was recuperating after a disastrous Republican administration.

The Middle East won’t be necessarily better with Mr Trump, and it is clear that he will allow Vladimir Putin to keep Bashar Al Assad in power and support Israeli settlement expansion. If you like that, then Mr Trump is your man. Omar Jaramillo, Germany Mr Obama has achieved more in eight years than most presidents before him, despite the sustained and massive efforts from the Republicans to prevent him from implementing any policies at all. Under his administration debt and unemployment dropped, health and welfare improved, people gained rights that should have been given decades ago. The list is extensive.

The only connection between Mr Obama’s term and the rise of Mr Trump is that the ultra-right could not accept the idea of a black man getting the top job of the United States. And to make matters worse, the man was smart, intelligent, charming, witty, made good decisions and generally did a brilliant job of it.

Despite all their best efforts and their constant whining about birth certificates, they were never able to find a single thing to discredit him or his family.

This is why the disenfranchised white males of “redneck” areas have obsessively lapped up all of Mr Trump’s lies.

They wanted a Trump so they could slap down all the liberals, blacks, Muslims, Mexicans and anyone else they perceive as better than themselves. Name withheld by request The recession Mr Obama inherited magnified the social alienation of the whites and fuelled their willingness to support a racist, anti-intellectual, sexual predator, who promised them to bring back long gone jobs and that they would have permission to blame minorities for their misfortune. He used Second World War rhetoric to invoke the sense that he alone could help them. How is that Mr Obama’s fault? There are terrible foreign-policy decisions that can be placed squarely at Mr Obama’s door, but the rise of Mr Trump cannot be blamed on him. Latifa Jackson, US