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The exact quote was, "the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens" ... which is a bit more obviously Orwellian than your paraphrase. Maybe that's just a question of style; as a question of substance, both the original quote and the paraphrase are wrong.
The first duty of the American government is to obey the Constitution.
That's a complicated duty, and far-too-often breached, but at least technically that's the duty that qualifies our leaders to fit the definition of "the American government" rather than for an entry in the wiki for auto-coup. It's not always even a popular duty, though it's generally at least popular enough that "pass an amendment to widen what other duties the government can legally handle" doesn't ever get considered. Many people think violating the Second Amendment would be a good way to protect American citizens from shootings. Most think violating the Tenth Amendment often helpfully protects American citizens from being taken advantage of. Some think violating some combination of the Fourth through Eighth Amendments is a good way to protect American citizens from criminals. A few think violating Art. I election laws could be justified to protect American citizens from bad politicians. Many thought that violating the Assembly Clause was justified to protect American citizens from Covid.
They're all wrong.
Those are all real threats that American citizens deserve some protection from, true, and so are illegal aliens (both in the sense that some are serious criminals and in the sense that all of them do a little bit to undermine the rule of law), but the concept of protection is not a backdoor password to unchecked power, and it it seems pretty transparent that the people who attempt to use it that way are more interested in the power than in the protection.
...and the first words of the Constitution are the Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The lens through which the rest of the document must be read is one of in-group preference. In fact, just to hammer the point, home, the power (and, implicitly, the duty) to "establish a uniform rule of naturalization" - i.e., standards for who gets let into the in-group, and who has to remain on the outside - is explicitly granted to Congress by Article 1, Section 8. No need to muck around with "necessary and proper" implicit federal powers, like we do for such trivial things as setting up the Fed. No, establishing and policing the boundary between Americans and non-Americans is very much within the scope of the Constitution's mandate.
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“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”
I would say our government is designed to protect American’s right to life, liberty, and property. Maybe Trump’s meaning was merely about safety but I think you could read it more broadly (especially consistent with his general America first messaging) that our government should be focused on protecting our lives, our liberty, and our property.
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I see where you're going with this, and to some extent agree that a shared commitment to the words is what embodies the power of the American government, but I wouldn't go wholesale on this because it'd be too easy to See Like A State and circularly define that the first duty of American Government is to protect American Government (defined as a polity that obeys the Constitution), and governments protecting themselves qua governments over the actual opinions of The People is basically the definition of totalitarianism.
So I think I'll argue that there is a Zeroth Principle in the Constitution that the American people choose to bind themselves by it until and unless they decide to change it (via the established procedures) or replace it, for which some procedures have been written, but other routes are implied to exist by the Declaration of Independence.
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No you're actually wrong. The first duty of a government is to serve its people. Constitutions are just a means of achieving that.
No, that's the first goal of a government. And Constitutions are the means of achieving that, not just a means, because it's such a complex and difficult-to-evaluate goal that you have to operationalize it in terms of more objective rules; otherwise in practice it stops being a goal and starts being an excuse.
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