David French: Trump Operatives Intimidated My Wife’s Family

David French, the National Review writer whose name was floated as a possible last-minute conservative presidential candidate, said the Trump campaign threatened his family after his name surfaced as a possible nominee.

From an interview this morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe":

BRZEZINSKI: “Did Trump operatives reach out to your family or you?”
FRENCH: “My wife’s family, yes, yes.”
BRZEZINSKI: “End?”
FRENCH: “Well, you know, 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 in the most incompetent way possible.”
BRZEZINSKI: “What happened?”
FRENCH: “An individual call, he said ‘I’m sorry but I’ve been asked by the Trump campaign to make sure that David knows this will be really — really bad for him. Which, you know, I learned about it after I made the decision.” [crosstalk]
BRZEZINSKI: “Was it a threatening?”
FRENCH: “I assumed if I did this, look, I have been up against Trump for some time. And the assaults on my family have been overwhelming just as a writer. The — as everyone knows, Trump has an online racist mob that he often stokes by retweeting some of these horrible white supremacists. As he — that online mob is very fond of pointing out, I have a multiracial family, and so they have gone after my daughter —“ 
SCARBOROUGH: “Oh, my God!”
FRENCH: “— in the worst way imaginable. the worst way. It’s one of the things —“
BRZEZINSKI: “I’m sorry.”
SCARBOROUGH: “They’ve attacked you for having a multiracial family?”
BRZEZINSKI: “You have no idea. Threats. I’ve had neighbors who — this is months ago before I even go. Considered this; neighbors who were nervous there were going to be attacks in our neighborhood.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Wow!”
FRENCH: “It’s been — he unlocked something terrible in this country. It’s one of the reasons I was so motivated to look at this. If nobody it stepping up but the reasoning that somebody is better than nobody. It’s not always the case. If — if I did more harm than good, you know as somebody without a lot of name ID coming forward without the natural constituency behind me he could go, ‘Oh, look, there’s that not many Americans who oppose me.’ When there are millions, millions who are ready to do it.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Right.”
GEIST: “So, was that someone from the Trump campaign, you said called someone from your wife’s family?” [crosstalk]
FRENCH: “They identified themselves as someone affiliated with the Trump campaign who had been told to call, you know, a member of my — they tracked down a member of my wife’s family in Tennessee while this is going on. And I — you know, I only learned about it later. You know —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Did you consider that a threat?”
FRENCH: “I considered it a ham handed effort to intimidate.”