Abon’go Malik Obama, the estranged Kenyan-American half-brother of former U.S. president Barack Obama, took to X on Wednesday to announce he’ll be voting for Donald Trump. As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Barack and Malik were initially on good terms, but their relationship became strained at a certain point.
It now appears the pair are far from reconciling as Malik, who is a businessman and politician, publicly endorsed Trump for president on Wednesday. “I am Malik Obama. I’m a registered Republican and I’m voting for President Donald Trump,” the 66-year-old posted.
Per Vox, Malik has been a registered voter in Maryland since 2016. Malik has been openly critical of his 63-year-old half-brother Barack as well as Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Prior to announcing he was going to vote for Trump, Malik had taken to X the day before to take another shot at his half-brother.
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“Fake A** when we were brothers” he captioned alongside a throwback photo of him and Barack. Before their relationship went south, Malik avidly supported his half-brother. He even told The Associated Press in 2004 that Barack was the best man at his wedding and “I was best man at his”, Newsweek reported.
But he later started being openly critical of his half-brother. In 2020, Malik criticized his sibling for not supporting the extended Obama family back home in the village of Kogelo, Kenya. Malik called the former U.S. president “cold and ruthless” while urging Americans to reelect President Donald Trump in November instead of his brother’s former vice president, Joe Biden.
Malik was speaking to the New York Post back home in Kenya following the release of his book, Big Bad Brother From Kenya. “He got rich and became a snob,” Malik said of Barack. “What I saw was he was the kind of person that wants people to worship him. He needs to be worshiped and I don’t do that. I am his older brother so I don’t do that.”
Malik and Barack share the same father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan economist who passed away in a car accident in 1982. Three years after his death, Malik met his half-brother Barack for the first time. Barack was then a 24-year-old Chicago community organizer and the two had a close relationship for decades before they fell out with each other.
Their strained relationship first began when Barack became president and issues arose as to which of his Kenyan relatives would be invited to his inauguration. Then things got worse after Malik told Barack of plans to set up a foundation named after their father – the Barack H. Obama Foundation.
Barack, who had then just been elected to the White House, was against the idea, fearing that the Barack H. Obama Foundation would be confused with him.
“We had a big fight on the phone because he was not in support and insisted I shut down the website and not continue with the foundation. He had his reasons but I was not having any of it,” Malik writes in his self-published memoir which he spent 22 years writing, according to the Post.
“We talked late into the night that night. He threatened to ‘cut me off’ if I continued with the idea.”
Malik went ahead with the foundation, which got into trouble with the law in 2011 when it claimed to be a tax-exempt nonprofit while it had not registered as such.
Then in 2014, Malik claimed that he asked his brother for help in burying their aunt Zeituni Onyango. “We needed to pay for the bills and the cost of her transportation back to Kenya,” Malik writes in his 435-page book. “[Barack] asked me how much and I told him roughly $20,000. This was too much he said.”
Barack eventually gave the family $5,000. “She really had been good to him,” Malik writes. “I don’t understand how somebody who claimed to be a relative or a brother can behave the way that he’s behaving, be so cold and ruthless, and just turn his back on the people he said were his family.”
READ ALSO: Barack Obama reveals he met his Kenyan father only once
Malik has in the past also expressed his displeasure with Barack’s “very business-like” and “very formal” reception toward him when he visited the White House in August 2015. Then in 2016, Malik made headlines after saying he was supporting Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Malik’s decision to support Trump ignited online conversations about the meeting points, if any, between politics and ideology and the good old tradition of standing up for your family.
Many were quick to note that while Malik reserved the right to support any political party or lean toward any ideological movement, his actions, which seemed to be aimed at slighting his brother, appeared to be motivated by jealousy and spite.
Malik’s stance has since not changed.
