AS a Herald reader for 50-plus years I have been shocked by your treatment of the upcoming US Presidential election. This culminated for me in the Analysis article that was printed regarding the attitude of your sister paper USA Today and the reasons they claim they have been biased towards Joe Biden ("USA Today: We're making our first presidential endorsement", The Herald October 23).

In the interest of balance there are several points which need to be made. Firstly, on the coronavirus Donald Trump acted before anyone and banned flights from China and was immediately roundly criticised by Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. On the actual performance of the Trump administration on handling the virus, if you remove Democrat-controlled New York from the figures ( which is surely justified as Governor Cuomo ordered patients infected with the virus to be transferred to care homes which resulted in a very high death rate), then the US is no worse than many countries and better than most.

To state that the country has racial problems is unquestionably true but the reason is less obvious. When Antifa and Black Lives Matter took to rioting and looting under the cover of peaceful protest there were no words of criticism from the Democrats and in fact there appeared to be support for the rioters when various cities refused help offered by Mr Trump. It is surely apposite to mention that the racial divide increased significantly under the Obama presidency yet factors such as African American (and Hispanic) employment is at an all-time high. You would have to be totally blinkered not to see that the US economy was doing exceptionally well prior to the virus and figures appear to show it is recovering rapidly at the moment.

The truly incredible hypocrisy in the article comes in its description of Mr Biden as having "character, competence and credibility". The media have consistently blocked any reference to Mr Biden's regular bouts of confusion, which probably explains why he has been staying in his basement. There are a very significant number of previous speeches by Mr Biden which suggest some very unacceptable views on matters such as race and the economy. Then of course there is the elephant in the room which is his son Hunter Biden's laptop containing thousands of emails and texts which not only incriminate Hunter but also shows Joe Biden was lying when he said he never discussed Hunter's business dealings with him. USA Today along with most of the rest of the media have effectively blocked publishing of this story. Sadly, you also succumbed to this effective denial of free speech especially as both the FBI and the Department of Justice have stated that there is zero evidence of the Democrat-inspired suggestion that it is Russian interference.

In my opinion this election is about who actually runs the United States. Will Hollywood, Big Tech and the Democrat-loving media push Mr Biden into office or will Mr Trump get his message through in spite of constant negative reporting by the media?

David Stubley, Prestwick.