In June of 2013, more than 100 immigration reform advocates staged a protest on the front lawn of a large home in a Kansas City suburb. As a megaphoned voice rallied the crowd, protesters filed neatly up the porch steps and, one by one, placed shoes just outside the front door. Each pair, they said, represented a fatherless family, shattered by deportation. The protest was organized by Sunflower Community Action, a local non-profit focused on social justice. The home belonged to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the nation’s most indefatigable voter fraud conspiracy theorist and the natural heir to Donald Trump’s throne.

Kobach’s response was a perfect encapsulation of the far right’s—and hence the modern Republican Party’s—twisted views on immigration. “I thank God I wasn’t there with my kids,” he told a local TV affiliate, “because my children would have been terrified to see all these people, this mob, swarming up to our house and shouting things through the megaphones about their daddy that they would have perceived as a threat, and it would have scarred them.” In Kobach’s world, white, God-fearing Americans are under assault from the brown, unhinged rabble. The deep scars left on children whose parents had been deported did not get a mention.

Kobach then took to Fox News for some brand-building and red meat throwing. “If we had been in the home and not been armed, I would have felt very afraid because it took the police 15 minutes to show up,” said Kobach. “It’s important we recognize there’s a reason we have the Second Amendment. There are situations like this where you have a mob and you do need to be able to protect yourself.”

Kobach’s rise is indicative of what Trumpism may look like long after Trump himself has left the scene.

This is the man Trump tapped in May to lead his voter fraud commission, which last week sent out a letter to all 50 states requesting the personal information of registered voters, causing even the governors of red states to bristle. Trump had announced the formation of the commission after blaming his popular vote loss in the 2016 presidential election on illegal votes cast by millions of undocumented immigrants. There is no evidence for any of this, of course, but Trump’s mind is the place where evidence goes to die.

Kobach’s mind, in contrast, is a place far more sinister. It is the place where evidence goes to be tortured and mutilated, then locked away in a dark room forever. The truly scary part, however, is that Kobach is far more polished and experienced than his mentor. His voter fraud commission seems extreme now, but being at the cutting edge of right-wing politics has only helped ambitious Republicans over the past ten years. Kobach has already announced his plans to run for governor of Kansas, and his continued rise is indicative of what Trumpism may look like long after Trump himself has left the scene.