CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checked President Donald Trump over an imaginary tale he told about his uncle and the infamous Unabomber.
The president frequently boasts about his late uncle John Trump, who taught electrical engineering for decades at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he regaled supporters this week with bizarre claims about the late terrorist Ted Kacziynski being one of his students.
"It didn't take too much research to figure that out," Dale said. "So how do we know this story could not even possibly be true? Well, first of all, the president's late uncle, the esteemed MIT professor John Trump, died in 1985. The Unabomber was not revealed to be Ted Kaczynski until 1996, the year he was arrested, more than a decade later. So there is frankly no reason why Donald Trump would be asking anyone about Ted Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier, when Ted Kaczynski was living this reclusive life in a Montana wilderness cabin."
"Even if Kaczynski had been one of his uncle's students, which he wasn't, John Trump taught at MIT for decades, Kaczynski went to Harvard and the University of Michigan," Dale added. "I reached out to MIT about this. They said they have no record, no information to suggesting that Kaczynski ever attended MIT."
Dale fact-checked some other claims Trump made at the Pennsylvania event about his uncle.
"It's also not true that John Trump was the longest-serving MIT professor ever," Dale said. "He was there for decades, he was a renowned guy, but the school says not the longest-serving, and number two, his degrees were not in nuclear, chemical and math. He did have three degrees. Two were in electrical engineering, that's what he was a professor of, the other was in physics."
"So, look, this, I think, is small potatoes compared to all the other stuff this president lies about on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, from the economy to the war in Ukraine to his record," Dale added. "But when the president of the United States is just flat, making up a colorful story, I think it's important to point that out."
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