Obama's half-brother to vote for Trump

US President Barack Obama's Kenyan half-brother said he will vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump because he wants to make America great again.

"I like Trump because he speaks from the heart," Malik Obama told New York Post from his home in the rural village of Kogelo. "Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him."

Malik Obama, 58, a Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln".

The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail servers when she was Secretary of State.

"She should have known better as the custodian of classified information," said Obama.

Malik Obama was also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whom he called one of his best friends.

Malik Obama dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Gaddafi and others who were "making this world a better place".

"I still feel that getting rid of Gaddafi did not make things any better in Libya," he said. "My brother and the Secretary of State disappointed me in that regard."

But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party's support of same-sex marriage.

"I feel like a Republican now because they don't stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me," he said.

Malik Obama believes strongly in the institution of marriage -- so strongly that he has at least three current wives, although press reports have put the number to as high as 12.

Malik Obama made headlines in 2011 when he married his third wife who was still in her teens.

Obama plans to trek back to the US to vote for Trump in November. Obama used to live in Maryland, where he worked for many years as an accountant and is registered to vote there, public records show.

The President's and Malik's father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya in 1959 when Malik was a year old and his mother was pregnant with his sister Auma.

Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham. Malik Obama did not meet his younger half-brother until 1985. Barack Obama, 54, has seven half-siblings from both sides of his family.

Malik Obama, the eldest, is the director of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a controversial Virginia charity named after his father.

--IANS

py/vt