WH: Obama not close with Trump-backing half-brother

by Jordan Fabian - 10/19/16 1:37 PM ET

President Obama’s top spokesman on Wednesday stressed that the commander in chief doesn’t have a close relationship with his half-brother, Malik, who was invited to the final presidential debate of 2016 by Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“I don’t anticipate the president has spent a great deal of time thinking about it,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters regarding the invitation.

{mosads}Asked about the relationship between the two men, Earnest said, “There’s not much of one.”

Earnest added that he doesn’t “really know what the intent” of the invitation is, other than to get reporters “to ask me about it.”

Malik Obama, the president’s Kenyan-born half-brother, scored an invitation to the Las Vegas debate from Trump.

“I’m excited to be at the debate. Trump can make America great again,” Obama, who has the same father as the president, told the New York Post.

The 58-year-old has U.S. citizenship and has split his time between Kenya and Washington, D.C., for the past 31 years.

“I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik,” Trump told the Post. “He gets it far better than his brother.”

ABC News reported Wednesday afternoon that the Trump campaign is paying for Obama to come to the debate.

Tags Donald Trump