In a year that has seen former national security officials opine that Donald Trump is manifestly unfit for office and has Americans afraid he’ll launch a nuclear war in a fit of pique, Annie Linskey reassures us that the president is learning on the job (“Fitfully, Trump is learning on the job,’’ Page A1, Dec. 24). To do so, she quotes a litany of Trump boosters who exhibit the sycophancy that Trump has been reported to prize. Even among this one-sided sample of Trump observers, the best they can muster is that the president has discovered that he can’t rule by decree.

What we’ve all learned is that an unscrupulous president can violate long-accepted norms, enrich himself at the public trough, and routinely lie while the press finds the smallest of things to paint him in a positive light.

Saul Tannenbaum

Cambridge