Bill Kristol, the beating neocon heart of the flat-lined Never Trump movement, has a message for Democrats who think Americans are too smart to vote for Donald Trump, like he did and (sorta) still does.

“If I were Hillary Clinton's campaign, I would be worried,” the puckish founder of The Weekly Standard told me during an hourlong sit-down for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast as the Republican National Convention was wrapping up in Cleveland last week.


“She's up like 5 points over Trump, who has made all these mistakes and he has more room to grow, I think, because he could reassure people if he runs a semi-intelligent, semi-normal campaign, whereas what's she going to do? I mean, there's no reintroduction of Hillary Clinton that could be possibly be made at this point, I think.”

Like a lot of establishment Republicans, Kristol will watch and wait over the next three months, but he says chances are “very, very low” he’ll vote for a man he’s repeatedly flogged as unfit for national office. Clinton, nah.

“I think I'm probably closer to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump on foreign policy, and maybe trade,” he said. “If it were a domestic policy election, I probably would swallow hard and vote for Trump. If it were a pure foreign policy election, I'd probably swallow hard and vote for Hillary Clinton.”

What he really pines for is a nice, reasonable “generic Democrat” decent on foreign policy, without the manifest character defects of a Clinton: “If Tim Kaine were the Democratic nominee …”

Ted Cruz is the freedom-and-values-voter conservative anti-Trump, and despite his high-risk attack on Trumpism from the podium last week, he still represents a robust percentage of the party’s Southern and Midwestern base. Kristol, the embodiment of the party’s hawkish ideological elite, is in a more tenuous position.

On one hand, Kristol represents a group of pro-Israel interventionists who encouraged George W. Bush to invade Iraq — a decision the “America First” Trump regards as original sin. On the other hand, Trump’s rhetorical foreign policy — the calls to kick ISIS’ ass and keep China in check — sounds like GOP Classic, and Kristol is still a brand manager for American power projection. Trump speaks loudly and carries a small stick.

That’s the biggest danger, Kristol warns, that his mouth will get him into wars he’s ill-equipped to fight. “Trump is more Rumsfeldian,” Kristol said — referring to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom he blames for failing to prepare for the post-invasion Iraq civil war. “It's sort of the worst of all worlds, you know. Be very aggressive but then don't be serious about following up on being aggressive.”

Kristol, like most mainstream Republicans, mis-underestimated Trump badly and assumed he would burn off like a bottom-shelf casino hangover and reason would prevail. Kristol’s opponents, especially those who blame him for playing a central role in the early Iraq fiasco, accused him of I-know-better intellectual arrogance.

But in person he has a witty, self-deprecating manner, and when he talks about his miscalculation on Trump, his whole being seems to shrug, like an Upper West Sider who suddenly realizes how wrong that New Yorker cover showing Manhattan dominating the rest of the country really, really is.

“He needs to reassure you he actually could be president of the United States," he told me. “Maybe that's just me being too conventional. Maybe I don't get it. Maybe Trump should just ride that populist kind of demagogic horse all the way to the White House, and maybe he could. I kind of hope not.”

That Kristol has finally reached the fifth, and presumably final, stage of Trump grief — acceptance — is no piddling matter. He was one of the final dead-enders, spending weeks this spring trying to recruit a third-party alternative (his lawyer pal David French, who said no thanks, was the closest he got), and denial was the burning river that ran through the Cleveland of his pre-convention dreams. Consider this Kristol tweet from late June: “Prediction: 2016 GOP MVP will be @Reince, who steps up, ensures open convention, saves party from Trump and produces ticket that wins in Nov.”

Not so much. There’s no way he’s going to actually vote for Trump, but Kristol’s mind-set has shifted to mitigation, not eradication of the virus that has infected his party. “I do think it would be — he would be well-advised to semi-apologize for some of the things he's said, and he could get — again, the bar for him is so low. People like me wouldn't forgive him, but I think a lot of people out there would want to forgive him,” Kristol said — laying out a possible path for a Trump victory.

“I do think the thing he has going for him that I think — and maybe I'm, again, too scarred by '92, to go back to the Bush-Quayle years — in a change year, being the candidate of change is a huge advantage. Voters will want to overcome their concerns about the change candidate, because they do want change.”

Bill Kristol on Donald Trump's foreign policy: “It's sort of the worst of all worlds, you know." | Getty

Kristol has pretty much hammered Trump since the TV reality star signaled an intention to run a year ago. The one thing he doesn’t attribute to Trump: a deep-seated anti-Semitism. (“I don’t think he wakes up every morning thinking that, you know, I wish the Jews weren't around, or stuff,” Kristol said.)

There was one glimmer of potential reconciliation last summer when Kristol used his perch on the Standard’s editorial page to praise one or two elements of Trump’s kickoff speech, especially his appeal to populist economic concerns. The piece made it clear he viewed Trump at the bottom of his list (along with non-interventionist Rand Paul), but the softness of the slap was noted in the upper precincts of Trump Tower.

“So I'm in the office on Friday, early August, two or three weeks after he’d announced,” Kristol recalls.

The phone rings. Kristol’s assistant tells him “Donald Trump's assistant is on the phone and says he wants to talk with you" — and he immediately assumes it’s a practical joke played on him by Stephen Hayes and John McCormack, his staff writers and pals.

"Well, put it through," he said, waiting for the punch line.

"Please hold for Mr. Trump," the female voice on the other end of the phone says — adding that she was patching the call through to Mr. Trump’s plane, which was about to take off for Iowa. By this time, Kristol realized it was real — and he immediately thought how clever Trump was to call him just before takeoff, to keep the chat crisp and uncomplicated.

"Hey, Bill, good to talk to you," Trump told him. "Hey, thanks a lot for what you've been — I love your magazine, love your magazine, and they tell me it's really great” — and here Kristol laughs, because Trump has just admitted he’s never actually read The Weekly Standard.

"They told me you said you'd never really vote for me, but I'm going to persuade you otherwise, Bill,” Trump added. “But anyway, I appreciate you, at least on TV, you're saying that, you know, people should listen to me and take me serious, and you're fair. I really appreciate the — I always like fair-mindedness, you know. We'll have to get together sometime. Hey, got to hang up. Got to take off for Iowa."

That was the last time they talked. The next day Trump mocked John McCain’s military service.