President Donald Trump has claimed that his uncle, Dr John Trump, once taught Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Speaking at an energy summit in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, Trump described Kaczynski as a “seriously good” student and a “genius.”
However, records show that Kaczynski never attended MIT. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1962 and his master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan by 1967. He later taught as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, until 1969.
Dr John Trump, a professor of electrical engineering and physics at MIT and a pioneer in cancer research, died in 1985, more than a decade before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber in 1996. There is no evidence the two ever met, and Kaczynski’s writings and interviews contain no mention of Trump’s uncle or MIT.
Trump’s anecdote contradicts established facts. Kaczynski carried out a series of bombings from 1978 to 1995, killing three people and injuring 23. He died by suicide in federal prison in 2023.
