It comes as no surprise that Donald Trump would pick up the endorsement of anti-immigrant hardliner and conspiracy theorist Kris Kobach, who announced his support for the GOP presidential frontrunner in a statement today.
Kobach, who serves as the Secretary of State of Kansas, a talk radio host and an anti-immigrant legal activist, said that he is specifically endorsing Trump because of the billionaire mogul’s immigration stance, boasting that he told Trump that the PATRIOT Act “contains a provision that the United States can and should use as leverage with the Government of Mexico” to make them pay for the proposed border wall.
Back in 2012, Mitt Romney tapped Kobach, the architect of anti-immigrant laws throughout the U.S., to serve as an adviser on immigration policy in his campaign.
As Peter wrote at the time,
He may be best known as the brains behind Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, and he successfully pushed for anti-immigrant language in the platform, including a call for the federal government to deny funds to universities that allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition – a plank that puts Kobach and the platform at odds with Kansas law. Immigration is not Kobach’s only issue. He is an energizing force behind the Republican Party’s massive push for voter suppression laws around the country, and he led the effort to get language inserted into the platform calling on states to pass laws requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. He also pushed language aimed at the supposed threat to the Constitution and laws of the US from “Sharia law”; getting this language into the platform puts the GOP in position of endorsing a ludicrous far-right conspiracy theory.
Kobach, who once worked for an anti-immigrant hate group, has also spoken alongside White Nationalist leaders, most recently addressing a racist media outlet called the Social Contract Press.
Kobach has also used his radio show to voice his extremist views: He warned that Latinos may one day conduct ethnic cleansing in America, claimed Democrats are “replacing American voters with newly legalized aliens” and wondered if President Obama would ban the prosecution of black people , deriding the president as the product of “ Ctrl+Click or tap to follow the link">affirmative action culture” and possibly a secret Muslim.
His record as secretary of state is even more troubling, as Kobach used the myth of mass voter fraud to push through stringent laws that have disenfranchised thousands of Kansans.
