Conservative warns GOP being 'cowed' by Trump will backfire

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U.S. President Donald Trump uses a gavel after signing the sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

National Review conservative columnist Andrew McCarthy says there’s a threat lurking in the Republican Party’s decision to keep ceding power to President Donald Trump, and it’s going to come back and bite them possibly as soon as the next presidential election.

“You’ve got to hand it to President Trump: He has definitely shifted the terms of public discussion and debate,” said McCarthy.

The problem with a shifted debate, however, is that the debate remains shifted long after Trump is gone and a Democrat enters the White House.

McCarthy cited a recent New York Times report implying that Trump was now considering buying Greenland as an “inane” follow-up to his earlier threats of simply invading and stealing it from a NATO ally. Neither of these things are legal, of course, said McCarthy, who points out that both tactics for adding territory to the United States are impossible without Congressional approval.

But what got McCarthy’s “antennae pinging” was the fact that Trump had normalized talk of invading Denmark territory and simply taking it.

“President Trump has now done this sort of thing enough times that we no longer need discuss legality — just audacity,” said McCarthy.

In the same manner, McCarthy said Trump managed to normalize “taking a 25 percent cut of the profits on Nvidia’s microchip exports and the equity shares he is taking in private corporations” and his “scheme to seize and sell Venezuelan oil.”

“[The New York Times] must relish the thought … of the next Democratic president’s pouncing on and running with the precedents Trump is trying to set for unilateral executive action and hands-on management of the economy — including government control of formerly private businesses and monetization of its enforcement powers,” said McCarthy. “Perhaps that’s why the legality of these machinations is, less and less, a first-order media concern.”

“Still, shouldn’t it concern Congress?” McCarth asked. “I get that progressives are salivating over the prospect of a Democratic administration turbo-charged by Trump’s approach to governance. But are Republicans so cowed that they fail to see what the future holds — and that no one will pay them any mind when a Democrat does what Trump is doing if they don’t speak up now?”

Read McCarthy's National Review column at this link.

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