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Trump's impossible Unabomber story about deceased MIT uncle debunked [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2025-07-18  

Trump went to Pennsylvania earlier this week and told a crowd that his late uncle John, a legendary MIT professor, once said to him that the Unabomber "was seriously good at correcting people." The only problem: John Trump died in 1985, Kaczynski wasn't unmasked until 1996, and — perhaps most inconvenient of all — Kaczynski never went to MIT. The anecdote is impossible on every level, the kind of lie that collapses the moment you open Wikipedia.

Asked to defend the multiple lies, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt scolded reporters for caring, then said Trump has a letter that proves his uncle was an MIT professor. No one disputes that John Trump taught at MIT; the issue is that Trump claims he discussed Ted Kaczynski with a man who was already eleven years dead when Kaczynski's identity became public.

Leavitt's pathetic dodge is the rhetorical equivalent of answering "two plus two is four" when the question was "does the moon orbit Earth?" It's not an answer; it's loyalty Kool-Aid for MAGA cultists to swallow.

When the president spins tales that can't survive 30 seconds of fact-checking, it's more than a quirk — it's a serious warning light for the integrity of everything he says. If Trump can so casually invent having discussed the Unabomber with an uncle who was deceased when Kaczynski became infamous — and rely on his press team to deflect with unrelated "proof" — it sets a precedent that truth is optional and facts are just props.

If Trump can spin a ghost story about a dead uncle reviewing Harvard's most infamous dropout, what else is he freeballing? Could he also be lying about that scandalous birthday note to Epstein that the Wall Street Journal says he wrote?

Previously:

• Donald Trump's old spokesman John Barron was actually Donald Trump

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/07/18/trumps-impossible-unabomber-story-about-deceased-mit-uncle-debunked.html

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