Prominent conservative pundit Bill Kristol is courting fellow conservative writer and decorated veteran David French to launch an independent campaign for the White House. 

Kristol, the long-time editor of Weekly Standard, is a vocal critic of Donald Trump and has been looking to get a conservative figure into the 2016 race to run as an independent against the presumptive Republican nominee.

Over the weekend, Kristol tweeted, “There will be an independent candidate--an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”

A new report from Bloomberg News revealed that Kristol is attempting to recruit French - a staff writer at the conservative magazine National Review, who is also an Iraq War veteran, constitutional lawyer and author.

French is reportedly interested in a bid for the White House, but has not made up his mind yet. Some conservative donors have also shown interest in French running as an independent.

Trump reacted angrily to Kristol’s efforts to steal momentum from his campaign and dismissed the idea that a third-party run was imminent.

“Bill Kristol is a loser,” the real estate magnate said during a news conference on Tuesday. “His magazine is failing, as you know. It's going to be down — I don't think it even survives. He's getting some free publicity, but Bill Kristol, I've been watching this for two years.”

“I don't think he has anybody because now he's saying ‘it will come someday, it will come, you know, in the future.’ Well, if you read his tweet, his tweet was almost like it was imminent, like it's going to be announced this morning. And then all of the sudden he announced ‘well, maybe not so fast,’” he said.

Trump also suggested that no one at this stage of the race stood a chance against him. “It's a guaranteed loss.”

Kristol previously met with Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, to discuss how best to get an independent candidate into the race, potentially with Romney himself as the standard-bearer.

Last week, Trump secured the support of enough unbound delegates to reach the 1,237 threshold needed to clinch the GOP nomination.