Trump Claims His Uncle Taught the Unabomber at MIT - But There's One Small Problem [View all]

President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that his uncle taught Ted Kaczynski at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before Kaczynski became the Unabomber. However, Kaczynski did not attend MIT.

Trump attended the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, where attendees praised his leadership. During his remarks, Trump took a detour to talk about artificial intelligence and his late uncle, John G. Trump, who designed generators and was a professor at MIT. The president has occasionally invoked his uncle to try to burnish his family’s intellectual bona fides, and did so again on Tuesday:

I have to brag just for a second because when I first heard about AI, you know, it’s not my thing, although my uncle was at MIT. One of the great professors, 51 years, whatever, longest-serving professor in the history of MIT. Three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math. That’s a smart man. Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There’s very little difference between a madman and a genius.

But Kaczynski, I said, “What kind of a student was he, Uncle John, Dr. John Trump?” He said, “What kind of a student?” And he said, “Seriously good. He said he’d go around correcting everybody.”

But it didn’t work out too well for him. Didn’t work out too well. But it’s interesting in life.