National Review columnist David French said Tuesday that Donald Trump’s campaign tried to intimidate him and keep him out of the presidential race, and said Trump’s “online racist mob” has attacked his family.
“It was probably one of the more ham-handed attempts at intimidation, which, out of the Trump operation, you can expect things to be done the most incompetent way possible,” French said on MSNBC Tuesday.
“An individual calls and he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been asked by the Trump campaign to make sure that, you know, David knows that this will be really, really bad for him,'” French said.
“I considered it a ham-handed effort to intimidate,” he added.
French is a columnist and veteran who Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol hoped might run as a third party candidate against Trump and Hillary Clinton, but French said Sunday he wouldn’t run.
Still, French said his family was subjected to attacks from Trump supporters, including attacks against his daughter Naomi, who was adopted from Ethiopia.
“I have been against Trump for some time, and the assaults on my family have been overwhelming just as a writer,” he said. “As everyone knows, Trump has an online, racist mob that he often stokes by retweeting some of these horrible white supremacists.”
“As that online racist mob is very fond of pointing out, I have a multi-racial family, and so they have gone after my youngest daughter in the worst way imaginable,” he said.
“You have no idea,” French added. “Threats. I’ve had neighbors who … were nervous that there were going to be attacks in our neighborhood. He unlocks something terrible in this country.”
