Anti-Trump conservative writer: I won't run for president
Conservative writer David French will not run for president.
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who has been trying to find someone to run on a conservative platform against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, had touted the obscure French as a possible independent candidate. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012 and leading Trump critic, had likewise praised French.
French, a lawyer and Iraq War veteran, said last week that he was considering a bid after anti-Trump Republicans Romney, Sen. Ben Sasse and former Sen. Tom Coburn all announced that they would not run as independent candidates.
But now French has taken himself out of the running. "Here is a sentence I never thought I'd type: After days of prayer, reflection, and serious study of the possibilities, I am not going to run as an independent candidate for president of the United States," he wrote on National Review's website Sunday evening.
Kristol, for his part, tweeted Sunday that a path remains open for an anti-Trump conservative candidate. He promised over Memorial Day weekend that an "impressive" independent conservative candidate would run for president this year.
But the lack of any obvious candidate to take up the mantle is just the latest blow to the movement of conservative holdouts that refuse to back Trump. In recent weeks, many prominent Republicans have tepidly endorsed the real estate mogul, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee.
Even though he won't run for president, French wrote that he hopes another independent candidate emerges and criticized Republican leaders who are supporting Trump, including Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.
"Last week, Reince Priebus said that those involved in the independent effort were 'embarrassing themselves.' But what is more embarrassing? Is it doing your best to defend the nation you love from two people who are unworthy of its highest office? Or is it using your God-given gifts and talents to advance the interests of a man who cares only for himself and who rejects the very values you've long claimed to uphold?"