DR Ryan Beasley’s Agenda article is a comprehensive and entirely accurate summary of the many shortcomings and inadequacies of Donald Trump as the leader of a major international power like the USA (“Blunder and fiasco could be mark of a “Tirade Trump presidency”, The Herald January 23).

Mr Trump’s appalling performance and rabbling-rousing speech at his inauguration ceremony last Friday is, I’m afraid, an accurate trailer for what is to come over the next few years. Heaven knows how much damage he may do to international relations between the United States and other nations around the world with his “America first” bullying tactics, and how much disappointment and disillusion his doomed-to-fail internal policies will cause for all the people in the US rust-belt states who he has promised to deliver from their present miserable circumstances.

President Trump’s domineering business style may be well-suited for big real-estate deals, but it is totally inappropriate for a national leader and an international statesman. Yet it is unlikely that he will listen to any wise advice he is given, assuming the other wealthy businessmen and political extremists he is appointing to senior positions of state are capable of offering such advice.

The massive protest marches which took place around the US and elsewhere in the world over the weekend are too late. They should have been marching and protesting before Mr Trump even won the Republican nomination, and again during his disgraceful election campaign. It beggars belief that such an unstable character and unsuitable choice should ever have got near the Oval Office in the White House, and especially the nuclear button. The whole world will be holding its breath for the next four years, and praying that some unforeseen international emergency does not arise which needs an intelligent response and a statesmanlike intervention from the “leader of the free world”.

And we in the so-called United Kingdom will also have to cope with the disastrous economic consequences of a “hard Brexit”. What a cheerless prospect.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

ALISON Rowat (“The world holds its breath”, The Herald, January 21) believes that the election of Donald Trump has turned the myth that anyone can be President of the United States into a reality. In my view that is not the case. There are at least two requisites for a person to be elected to this high office. In the first place the individual needs to have the support of either the Democrats or Republicans. The second requirement is money, either in the form of personal wealth or through an ability to raise significant funds from supporters.

It is only when an independent candidate enters the White House with a moderate campaign budget that we can recognise the dream that anyone can become President of the United States.

Sandy Gemmill,

40 Warriston Gardens, Edinburgh.

I WOULD have thought the Women against Trump protesters’ energies would be better directed at regimes where women do not have anything like the rights they have in the United States, including protesting (“Women turn out in hundreds of thousands at global demonstrations”, The Herald, January 23).

Michael Lawrie,

Gryffe Lodge, Kilmacolm Road, Bridge of Weir.

I PUT on the TV news this morning and there were the Trumps, dancing to the strains of My Way. The first words I heard were "And now, the end is near ..."

Dr J A T Dyer,

Flat 6 29C Polwarth Terrace,

Edinburgh.

YOUR comment that "the new president already looked like a man out of his comfort zone and depth" (“The challenges lying ahead for President Trump”, The Herald, January 21) is a truism. There isn't a single human being on the planet who would not be out of his or her comfort zone and depth in that role.

When it is confirmed, I predict sooner rather than later, that President Trump is indeed out of his comfort zone and depth, he should be invited to join the SNP, within which he will feel at home.

William Durward,

20 South Erskine Park, Bearsden.