Trump invites Obama’s Kenyan-born half-brother, Benghazi mom to debate; Clinton brings Cuban, Whitman

Donald Trump’s guests at Wednesday’s presidential debate in Las Vegas will include President Obama’s Kenyan-born half-brother, the mother of a Benghazi victim, Wayne Newton and other surprises, according to the Republican nominee’s campaign.

Pat Smith, the mother of a State Department IT consultant who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, told Yahoo News earlier this week that she planned to accept Trump’s invitation to the debate.

“I think I’m going to be in the front row,” Smith said. “But I’m not sure.”

Smith spoke in July at the Republican National Convention, where she delivered an emotional speech laying blame for her son’s death squarely at the feet of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

“I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son,” Smith said then. “Personally.”

Malik Obama, who endorsed Trump in July, will also be a guest of the GOP nominee.

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

Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon told CNN’s Brian Stelter that Malik “is just the appetizer.” According to the New York Times, Team Trump is looking at additional guests in an effort to rattle Clinton. It’s unclear why Malik’s presence would bother Clinton, but he could remind voters of Trump’s years of pushing the conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States.

At the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Trump brought three women who accused Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, of sexual abuse or harassment. The women, though, were prevented from sitting in the family area by the debate organizers, thwarting Trump’s attempt to have them personally confront Bill Clinton. Trump also invited Kathy Shelton, who as a child was the victim in a 1975 case in which Hillary Clinton defended a man who was convicted of fondling Shelton. (The Times reported that Wednesday’s debate will apparently be set up to avoid such a stunt if it is repeated.)

The guest-list trolling began before the first debate, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign invited billionaire Trump critic Mark Cuban to attend. The Dallas Mavericks owner has again been asked by Clinton to Wednesday’s showdown.

The Clinton campaign has also invited Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in California, to the debate in Las Vegas.

The practice of bringing culturally symbolic people to political events was popularized by President Ronald Reagan, who invited Lenny Skutnik, a Capitol Hill staffer who pulled a plane crash victim out of the Potomac, to his 1982 State of the Union speech. During his address, Reagan praised Skutnik’s “heroism” — and the tradition of inviting so-called Skutniks to the State of the Union was born.

The guests at presidential debates are also “chosen for their symbolic value,” the Los Angeles Times notes. “But in this election year, in which the rules of decorum have fallen by the wayside, the guest list has also become about outright psychological warfare.”