Bill Kristol Steps Down As Weekly Standard Editor After 21 Years

In this image released by HBO, host Bill Maher, right, talks with Margaret Hoover, left, and Bill Kristol, center, during "Real Time With Bill Maher," in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 28, 2014. (AP Photo/HBO, Janet Van Ham)
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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.

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