Analysis: Trump has 'do what we want' mindset as 100th day in office nears

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s second-term governing doctrine could be summed up by these nine words the president uttered last week: “No one leads us. We do what we want.”

That’s been Team Trump’s approach, so far, at home and abroad — drawing praise from congressional Republicans and scorn from many Democrats, with his 100th day milestone coming on April 30. The president made that declaration in reference to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions as he talked to reporters in the Oval Office last week, and it reflects a high-octane governing style that Democrats haven’t been able to slow down.

Most recently, Trump’s handling of sweeping tariffs, his administration’s refusal to retrieve a Maryland man deported to El Salvador despite a Supreme Court order to “facilitate” his return and his talk of deporting U.S. citizens with criminal records to prisons on foreign soil show a chief executive determined to exert his will.

“These countries are all calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir,’” Trump told GOP lawmakers at a National Republican Congressional Committee gala last week, seeming to bask in the worldwide uncertainty spawned by his ever-changing import fee policy.

Trump was asked Monday in the Oval Office, alongside President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, if his administration might opt to deport American citizens, including migrants who have been fully naturalized.

“If they’re criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over their head that happened to be 90 years old, and if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them. They’re as bad as anybody that comes in,” he responded.

“And I’m all for it, because we can do things with (Bukele) for less money and have great security,” Trump said of his administration sending migrants accused of violent crimes and gang activity to a detention facility in El Salvador. “He does a great job with that. We have others that we’re negotiating with too. But no, if it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the administration would continue focusing on deporting people in the United States illegally rather than ensuring that such individuals first get a trial before an immigration court. She declined to answer a question about the White House’s legal rationale for even considering sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons.

The president’s handling of deportations — in particular, the case of the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia — has drawn ire from some congressional Democrats and their allies.

“In open defiance of the Supreme Court and without any evidence, the White House claims that Abrego Garcia is a ‘terrorist,’ who was ‘sent to the right place,'” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement Monday. “This is a blatant LIE. … Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an innocent man and the father of three. He must not be allowed to rot in an El Salvadorian jail based on lies and defiance of our Constitution. He must be brought home immediately.

“This is just another step forward in Trump’s move toward authoritarianism,” added Sanders, who has been drawing large crowds at rallies, including in college towns in deep-red states, with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy — like Sanders, a member of Senate Democratic leadership — called the Abrego Garcia case a “watershed moment.”

“You may not think this case matters to you. But Abrego Garcia was legally in the U.S., just like all the rest of us. His status as an immigrant doesn’t matter as a matter of law,” Murphy wrote on social media. “If Trump can lock up or remove ANYONE — no matter what the courts say — we are all at grave risk. … If we normalize this, there’s no end. He can lock up or remove anyone. We will no longer exist in a democracy.”

Unlike during his first term, Trump has spent little time calling out or mocking individual Democrats during his interactions with the media — but there are a few exceptions.

He has resurrected old derisive lines about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. And he’s brought up his predecessor, Joe Biden, hundreds of times since taking office. On Monday, while talking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump brought up Biden 13 times, according to an electronic search of transcript data.

But, publicly at least, Trump hasn’t had that much to say about Democrats like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and those who could be eyeing 2028 presidential bids. Instead, the president has kept barreling forward with unprecedented moves and executive orders that are testing the legal limits of his office’s powers.

“Now, we’re studying the laws right now. (Attorney General Pam Bondi) is studying,” he said Monday about possibly deporting U.S. citizens who are violent criminals. “If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people, really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in.”

Congressional Republicans have by and large stood by their party’s leader, including on his global import fees.

“This approach will generate more market access under better terms for American producers, and if any nation chooses not to cooperate, these tariffs, they will generate significant revenues,” House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said at a hearing last week. “Based on President Trump’s tariff policies, so far, it seems conservative to expect the U.S. to collect hundreds of billions of dollars in additional tariff revenue each year.”

Still, Trump has at times felt a need to check his fellow Republicans, possibly worried about being weakened politically if too many of them speak up in opposition.

“I’ll see some rebel Republican, some guy who wants to grandstand, say, ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations,’” a tuxedo-decked Trump said at the NRCC dinner about his global tariffs and what his team says are talks with more than 75 countries.

Then came what sounded like a warning for any wavering House Republicans, with the specter of a Trump-picked primary challenger looming.

“Let me tell you,” the president said, “you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”