The White House is 55,000 square feet.
Clearly an ample size for a home office, but maybe not big enough for the egos of President Donald Trump and Kris Kobach.
That could be the president’s thinking when he sidestepped Kobach for Virginian hard-liner Ken Cuccinelli to lead the fight against illegal immigration. Because, after all, who could be more rabid about immigrants than Kobach?
IN A MEMO leaked from the Kobach camp, our former Secretary of State had some outsized expectations if the president were to tap him as immigration czar.
In the memo, Kobach made 10 demands contingent on his accepting the position.
Top of the list: An office in the West Wing with walk-in privileges to the president’s office.
Next, around-the-clock access to a government jet.
Then, a salary on par with the highest pay level for White House senior staff.
And as if that weren’t enough, Kobach said he wanted the option to be named Secretary of Homeland Security by Nov. 1.
Mr. Trump may have been OK with the demands; perhaps even impressed by Kobach’s chutzpah.
But what may have pressed the president’s buttons was Kobach’s demand that he be the face of the administration’s immigration policy on TV and in the media.
To date, the president has not been eager to yield the stage to anyone.
IF MERIT were the determining factor in awarding the position, Kobach would have fallen short of the mark. His efforts to prove voter fraud by undocumented immigrants here in Kansas and elsewhere have proven baseless. Not only have officials failed to find any substantive cases, but those efforts routinely have been overturned in court. The same goes for the spurious Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, in which Kobach, as its chairman, was sure to find ballot boxes stuffed with fraudulent forms.
Instead, nothing.
Kobach’s alliance with Arizonan outcast Sheriff Joe Arpaio is further proof that Kobach’s mission has never been to enforce our laws, but rather to intimidate immigrants.
And public confidence in his abilities as a leader are lacking by evidence that in heavily Republican Kansas he lost the race for governor to a Democrat.
Even so, like a moth to a flame, the president seems to be drawn to Kobach and his ilk, much to the consternation of those who have been burned by their actions and shocked by their callousness.
— Susan Lynn
