Memelik forever!

It's a lot to take in: Barack Obama's half-brother, who was the best man at the president's wedding, is now a proud #MAGA-loving shitlord. How could a Kenyan immigrant who is only a few years away from social security so quickly develop such a mastery of the current alt-right cultural memefield of tropes and jokes? The only thing that's sure about the answer is that it involves Chuck Johnson in some way. According to both Obama and Johnson — the notorious journalist and troll who was controversially kicked off Twitter for asking his followers for money so he could "take out" civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson — it's all very simple: The latter taught the former how to use Twitter really, really well. On Saturday, Obama tweeted:

And lastly my people: Chuck Johnson taught me Twitter!

Responding to an email from BuzzFeed News asking how he had mastered Twitter so quickly, Obama wrote, "It's a wonderful medium for expressing oneself. Chuck Johnson got me started and my followers have taught me a lot. But most of it is just plain knack!"

Reached via email, Johnson concurred. According to him, the two connected in the spring in Washington, DC (Obama lived for years in Maryland), where Johnson began teaching Obama his method.

"I teach people neurolinguistic programming," Johnson wrote. "I have them speak while they tweet so that it appears more conversational and I make sure that they tap into people's emotions and not just their intellect. When Malik Obama told me he supported Donald Trump I helped him throughout the process." But today WeSearchr, Johnson's crowdsourced investigations company, retweeted a tweet suggesting that Johnson had groomed Malik Obama as part of a master plan to get back at Twitter.

Be Chuck Kicked off Twitter Act cool Plan Bide time Plan Befriend president's brother Attack media from president's bro's verified account