Immigration hardliner blocked as Homeland Security Chief

Immigration hardliner Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, was offered and then denied the position of Homeland Security Secretary, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Kansan was apparently blocked by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham because the budding administration didn’t want to mount a bruising fight over it in the…

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Immigration hardliner Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, was offered and then denied the position of Homeland Security Secretary, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Kansan was apparently blocked by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham because the budding administration didn’t want to mount a bruising fight over it in the early going.

Former Gen. John Kelly, now chief of staff, eventually got the nod. Kobach was also considered for Attorney General, and later served with the vice president, Mike Pence, as co-chairs of Trump’s controversial, now-scuttled national voter fraud commission.

Kobach’s appointment to…

Immigration hardliner Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, was offered and then denied the position of Homeland Security Secretary, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Kansan was apparently blocked by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham because the budding administration didn’t want to mount a bruising fight over it in the early going.

Former Gen. John Kelly, now chief of staff, eventually got the nod. Kobach was also considered for Attorney General, and later served with the vice president, Mike Pence, as co-chairs of Trump’s controversial, now-scuttled national voter fraud commission.

Kobach’s appointment to DHS would have come under a President Trump, who promises a border wall and mass deportation .

Kobach, who has degrees from Harvard and Yale, and two degrees (including a Ph.D) from Oxford, received treatment in 2017 as the savvy, sinister future of Trumpism in the left-liberal New Republic. The mag chortled that Kobach is “the nation’s most indefatigable voter fraud conspiracy theorist and the natural heir to Donald Trump’s throne.”

Kobach gained moderate attention and notoriety during the transition in November 2016 when he was pictured with the president-elect holding his gameplan, as it were, for the administration. Clever observers zoomed in on the picture and discovered some of the points: a proposed registry of Muslims entering the States, and changes to voting laws. A similar instance occurred with White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon last year, when his famous “list of promises” in the West Wing was accidentally partially photographed in a picture with prominent conservative Rabbi Shmuley Boteach .

Now, Kobach remains a force on the outside.

He contributes and is regularly interviewed by nationalist mainstay Breitbart and is a candidate for governor of his home state – a natural stepping stone to the White House. Youthful-looking and 51, it would seem he has ample time. He is beloved by movement luminaries such as Ann Coulter.

In a recent column, he forcefully argued against DACA amnesty.

“Granting an amnesty to the DACA aliens would be a profoundly bad policy that would hurt American workers and American taxpayers. They are not kids; they are mostly young adults in their 20s and 30s,” he wrote in Breitbart. “Despite the growing economy, young American adults are struggling in the workforce, with an unemployment rate of nine percent. And young Americans without a college degree (66 percent of them) are suffering an underemployment rate (unemployed or seeking full time work) that stands at a whopping 34 percent. Why in the world would we want to give legal status to nearly a million illegal aliens so they can compete against our own citizens in the same age group?