“I don’t know him well. I met him for the first time a couple of years ago,” Obama told CNN. “He stopped by with his wife for about five minutes during the trip.”
*The president said Wednesday that he met briefly with a half brother who lives in China and who recently wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about the abusive Kenyan father they share.
Obama, who spent three days in China during his first official tour of Asia, acknowledged the meeting in an interview with CNN. He offered no details. An aide said later that the meeting took place Monday night after Obama arrived in Beijing, the Chinese capital.
The White House had declined to say whether the president and Mark Ndesandjo would meet. And no White House official mentioned the visit until Obama did when asked about it.
“I don’t know him well. I met him for the first time a couple of years ago,” Obama told CNN. “He stopped by with his wife for about five minutes during the trip.”
Describing the meeting as “overwhelming” and “intense,” Ndesandjo told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that he had long anticipated the chance to welcome his famous brother to China.
“I think he came directly off the plane, changed some clothes and then came down and saw us,” Ndesandjo told AP Television News on Wednesday. “And he just gave me a big hug. And it was so intense. I’m still over the moon on it. I am over the moon. And my wife. She is his biggest fan and I think she is still recovering.”
In the CNN interview, Obama said he hadn’t read his brother’s book, “Nairobi to Shenzhen,” in which Ndesandjo says Barack Obama Sr. beat him and his mother. The president also wrote about his father, who had abandoned him as a child, in his best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”
