Amid ongoing efforts to not talk about the Epstein scandal, President Donald Trump went on a tangent about his uncle this week, claiming that the man taught Ted Kaczynski — aka the Unabomber — and declared Kaczynski a good student. But on Wednesday night’s episode of “Late Night,” Seth Meyers fully debunked that story.
While speaking at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, the president paused to “brag” about his uncle, “because when I first heard about AI, you know, it’s not my thing,” but his uncle worked at MIT. Trump repeated his claim that his uncle worked at the university for 51 years and was the longest serving professor at the school, neither of which is true.
“Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There’s very little difference between a madman and a genius,” Trump said. “But Kaczynski, I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr. John Trump.’”
“Then he said, ‘Seriously, good.’ He said he’d correct, he’d go around correcting everybody, but it didn’t work out too well for him,” Trump continued.
As the clip ended, Meyers paused to soak it in, before picking apart the story even further, beyond Trump’s false claim about his uncle’s tenure.
“It turns out, A) the Unabomber didn’t go to MIT,” Meyers explained (which is true, Kaczynski actually went to Harvard).
“And B) Trump’s uncle died 10 years before Kaczynski became known as the Unabomber,” he continued. “So the whole thing we just heard wasn’t just a small lie, it was like a full hallucination. Including the conversation Trump made up between him and his uncle. Although, how could you tell it was made up? I mean, it sounded so natural.”
The late night host then mimicked the exchange, poking fun at the idea that Trump would refer to his uncle as Dr. John Trump in casual conversation.
You can watch Seth Meyers’s full “A Closer Look” segment in the video above.
