Bloomberg: Bill Kristol’s Independent Candidate Is Former Lawyer For Alliance Defending Freedom

Bloomberg reports:

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French—whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tennessee, with his wife, Nancy, and three children.

Reached in Israel late Tuesday afternoon, Kristol declined to comment on his efforts to induce French to run. The two Republicans confirmed that French is open to launching a bid but that he has not made a final decision. One of the Republicans added that French has not lined up a running mate or significant financial support.

From Media Matters:

French has repeatedly demonized the LGBT community in his writing and worked as a lawyer at a right-wing legal group that has defended laws criminalizing homosexuality. At National Review, French has written extensively against LGBT equality and women’s access to abortion. He announced in 2010 that he had changed his mind and decided to oppose marriage equality, later warning that America was “racing off on our own cultural experiment.”

He’s written multiple pieces attacking the transgender community, lamented “transgender entitlement,” described a young transgender woman as a “man” who is “on the verge of mutilating himself,” and argued that states should reject federal education funding rather than prohibit discrimination against transgender students.

Media Matters notes that Alliance Defending Freedom has worked to criminalize homosexuality both in the United States and in foreign nations. They are also behind many of the so-called “bathroom bills” sweeping the nation and other anti-LGBT legislative campaigns. But you knew that.

If Bill Kristol thinks anybody to the left of Donald Trump will support somebody who is to the right of Ted Cruz, he is seriously smoking crack. In other words, go David French, go!

NOTE: Alliance Defending Freedom used to be known as Alliance Defense Fund.