Twenty-one years after co-founding The Weekly Standard with executive editor Fred Barnes, editor Bill Kristol announced his retirement from that position on Monday.
In a note published on the magazine’s website, Kristol announced that he would become The Weekly Standard’s editor-at-large, “continuing to write weekly editorials and contribute to the website.” Steve Hayes and Richard Starr would take over the day-to-day operations of the website, Kristol wrote.
Under Kristol’s editorship, The Weekly Standard has been the central publication for neoconservatives, including Kristol’s father, the so-called “godfather” of neoconservativism, Irving Kristol.
During the election season, Kristol was a leading voice in the #NeverTrump camp and searched publicly for months for a conservative alternative to Trump, briefly in National Review contributor David French and eventually in former CIA counterterrorism officer Evan McMullin.
For that, he drew Trump’s ire: In a joint interview with now-Vice president-elect Mike Pence in October, Trump called Kristol a “loser,” who has “called everything wrong,” including the War in Iraq, which Kristol supported enthusiastically in the pages of the Weekly Standard and elsewhere.