America’s least American president

Opinion Philip Bump America’s least American president Donald Trump isn’t making America great again. He’s making it into something else entirely. Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT 7 min

912 Donald Trump stands behind an American flag at a campaign event last year. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post) The facts of the case of Kilmar Abrego García are uncomplicated. An immigrant to the United States, he successfully convinced a court that he should not be returned to his home country of El Salvador because of threats he and his family faced from gangs in that country. He was sent to a prison there anyway, in what the Trump administration described as a mistake. The Supreme Court determined nearly a month ago that the administration had to do everything possible to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return; every indicator, however, is that neither the president nor his administration has done much of anything at all. Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter Instead, President Donald Trump and his team have gone out of their way to disparage Abrego García and to reframe the debate so that it focuses on his alleged transgressions, not their own. And they’ve gone further, not only ignoring the Supreme Court’s direction but shrugging at the idea that any immigrant might be entitled to legal hearings before being thrown onto an airplane and sent out of the country. Skip to end of carousel Sign up for the How to Read This Chart newsletter Subscribe to How to Read This Chart, a weekly dive into the data behind the news. Each Saturday, Opinions columnist Philip Bump makes and breaks down charts explaining the latest in economics, pop culture, politics and more. End of carousel On Sunday, NBC News aired an interview with Trump in which he expressed ignorance of the black-letter standards of justice established in the country’s founding document. “The Constitution says every person, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process,” “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker pointed out. So why not bring Abrego García back to the U.S. and use legal avenues to potentially remove him? Follow Philip Bump Follow “Well,” Trump replied, “I’ll leave that to the lawyers, and I’ll leave that to the attorney general of the United States.” Welker noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had admitted that even immigrants had due process rights. Trump again downplayed the idea, saying that holding hearings would mean “we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials.” This isn’t as big a hurdle as it may sound. In fiscal 2024, there were more than 900,000 immigration hearings completed. So far in fiscal 2025, there have been more than 460,000. More could be cleared if Trump hadn’t moved to fire a number of immigration judges. Finally, Welker noted that Trump didn’t really have a choice. “Even given those numbers that you’re talking about,” she asked, “don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” “I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.” You may recall that, in January, Trump put his hand on a Bible and affirmed to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that he would “faithfully execute” his role as president and to the best of his “ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But this has never been an oath he has appeared to actually take to heart. Trump’s dismissiveness of the Constitution has manifested itself in a lot of ways. You may recall his lack of interest in leaving office when he lost the 2020 presidential election. You may be aware that he has readily, if not giddily, accepted personal income from foreign governments while serving as president. He views the law as a cudgel, not a constraint, issuing pardons for various political allies ensnared in criminal activity while directing federal law enforcement to fish for potential criminal charges against those who work against his political power. At its heart, Trump’s approach to his role is rooted in his parochial sense of patriotism. He didn’t come to the White House after having worked his way up through lower offices, building consensus and working to appeal to a broad range of constituents. He had no appreciation for how legislation is crafted or for the hard work of reaching compromise. Perhaps most importantly, he has never indicated any robust understanding of American history or of the debates and agreements that led to the country’s creation. In 2011, for example, Trump was asked by Stephen Colbert if he knew what the 13 stripes on the American flag represent. He said he didn’t. More recently, Trump was asked by ABC News journalist Terry Moran what the Declaration of Independence (a copy of which the president recently had installed in the Oval Office) means to him personally. “It means exactly what it says. It’s a declaration,” Trump replied. “A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.” It is special to the country, of course, but not because it is a declaration of “love,” much less “unity.” As the name would suggest, it is precisely the opposite. Trump doesn’t have the Declaration of Independence in the Oval Office because he wants its message to serve as a guidepost for his administration. He doesn’t even appear to know its message. He has it there because it is A Famous American Thing, another decoration in the newly gilded room meant to send a message about his power, not the nation’s. This approach to nationalism isn’t new for Trump, the guy whose supporters are as likely to fly Trump flags as American ones. Like his vice president, he doesn’t see the country primarily as a largely successful experiment in granting people equality under the law and broad freedom. Trump sees it as a place that has a lot of wealth and power that he would love to deploy for his benefit and for the benefit of those who support him. Put another way, Donald Trump doesn’t want to “make America great again.” He wants to make America into something else entirely, a nation led by a strongman who deploys power as he sees fit. He wants to do to America what his friend Elon Musk did to Twitter: turn it into something different, something that serves his political allies and is subject to the arbitrary power of an autocrat. As Trump has worked to create a new America in that image over the past 100 days, the public has grown more worried about the health of American democracy. Research published on Monday by Bright Line Watch shows that the public rated the performance of American democracy with a 58 (out of 100) in December. By April, that had fallen to 49. Among a group of political scientists included in the research, the number dropped from 67 to 53 — putting the performance of American democracy, in their eyes, beneath that of Mexico. The figure even dropped among Republicans, though that might be because Republicans are frustrated with how the courts have opposed Trump’s efforts to subvert or sidestep the law and the Constitution. After all, another measure in Bright Line Watch’s analysis asked Republicans whether they considered themselves more supportive of Trump or of the party. In April, 6 in 10 said Trump, a higher percentage than a year ago. Asked to evaluate the actions Trump has undertaken during his second term, the political scientists included in Bright Line Watch’s assessment identified several as posing particularly robust threats to democracy. One was his effort to launch a criminal investigation of the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue. Another — the one most likely to be identified as a threat, with 95 percent of respondents saying so — was his indifference to the mandate that his administration attempt to bring Abrego García back to the U.S. The U.S. to which he might eventually be brought back already promises to be very different from the one from which he was expelled less than two months ago.