I CONFESS to deep disappointment and disbelief at reading Rosemary Goring's opinion contribution ("The United States finally has the president it deserves", The Herald, January 17). The country she describes is not one I recognise. Her article reflects the "post-truth" utterances of the media which appeared determined to get Hillary Clinton elected at all costs.

Probably the most important factor in the presidential election was trust or lack of it. Mrs Clinton had a track record of serious contraventions of the law and in fact details have just been released which shows that she sent highly secret emails to one of her team and that these emails were hacked by at least three countries, Russia, China and Israel. This in itself is a crime punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Couple that with the proven cheating to ensure she beat Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination and you can understand why a large proportion of the voters would have voted for a stray dog rather than her.

The Democratic Party itself had been done no favours by President Obama. In his departure speech he claimed five great achievements of his presidency but on inspection every one of them was seen to be a fallacy. In the case of race relations they have not been worse in the last 25 years in no small part because Mr Obama blamed every problem and criticism on racism. Unfortunately for him a lot of voters saw through the paucity of "Change you can believe in".

In this set of circumstances the voters saw Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils. Among ordinary Americans I speak to there is a positivity and optimism about the future. There appears to be a feeling that they have taken control of their own destiny and are ignoring the Hollywood luvvies and liberal media crying foul just because they lost. As the Chinese would say, "we live in interesting times".

David Stubley,

22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.