Latest news with #JohnTrump
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
It's well past time to start talking about Trump's decline
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump told a story that, even for the least honest president in American history, was notable. During an energy and technology summit in Pittsburgh, Trump claimed that his uncle John Trump, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, taught the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. 'My uncle was at MIT, one of the great professors,' Trump said. 'Fifty-one years, whatever. Longest-serving professor in the history of MIT. Three degrees in nuclear, chemical and math. That's a smart man.' Though Trump has claimed for years that his deceased uncle is the longest-serving professor at MIT, it's not true, and it has been repeatedly debunked. But Trump was only getting started. Kaczynski was one of his uncle's students, Trump said. He then asked the audience, 'Do you know who Kaczynski was?' and cryptically noted, 'There's very little difference between a madman and a genius.' According to the president, he once had a conversation with John Trump about Kaczynski: 'What kind of a student was he, Uncle John?' Dr. John Trump,' Trump asked. 'He said, 'What kind of a student? 'Man,' he said, 'seriously good. ... He'd go around correcting everybody.' But it didn't work out too well for him.' This is an interesting story, but what is most notable about the president's digression is that none of it was true. First, Kaczynski attended Harvard, not MIT, so it would be unusual, though not impossible, that this uncle would come in contact with the future Unabomber. (Students at both schools do cross-enroll on occasion, though NBC News reported the courses Kaczynski took were taught at Harvard, not MIT.) Second, John Trump passed away in 1985. Kaczynski committed bombings that killed three people and wounded nearly two dozen others from 1978 to 1995. He was finally arrested in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison in 1998. If both the president and his uncle knew that Kaczynski was the Unabomber more than a decade before his arrest ... now that would be a story! Asked about Trump's making up this story, White House press secretary Katherine Leavitt admonished and deflected. 'That with so many issues going on in the world, I'm a little bit surprised you would ask such a question,' said Leavitt. Trump's Unabomber tale is yet another example of the what can feel like an increasing disconnect from reality. Yet, as with so many of Trump's recent and unsettling statements, too many in the mainstream media seem uninterested in covering the story. Trump's Unabomber story has received scant coverage, despite reflecting a repeated pattern of confused and exaggerated statements. For example, the day after his bizarre digression in Pittsburgh, Trump complained once again about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and publicly stated, 'I was surprised he was appointed.' The person who appointed Powell was Donald Trump in 2017. On Monday, at a White House Faith Office summit, he called Powell 'a knucklehead' and a 'stupid guy,' derided the intelligence of other politicians, including his former energy secretary Rick Perry, and said former President Joe Biden 'wasn't faithful enough and sought to persecute religious leaders.' At the same gathering, Trump asserted that gas prices have 'gone to the lowest level in decades. You're seeing $1.99, $1.98, I saw $1.95 at certain states.' Trump has made this claim repeatedly — two weeks ago and several times in April. In fact, the average national gas price has never fallen below $3 a gallon since Trump took office in January, and it is currently around $3.16. Trump also appears at times to have very little idea of what's happening within his own administration. In the run-up to passage of his massive tax and spending bill, he repeatedly claimed that it would eliminate taxes on Social Security — a claim that massively exaggerates the impact of the bill. Of even greater concern is a story that received almost no attention. NOTUS reported that, only days before the legislation was signed into law, Trump told House Republicans that if the party wants to win elections, it shouldn't cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. According to three sources, one GOP member had to tell Trump, 'But we're touching Medicaid in this bill.' Additionally, Trump made an exceedingly odd comment when asked why his administration had paused military aid shipments to Ukraine, going so far as to ask a reporter whether she knew who had ordered the halt. One might conclude from this compendium of stories that America is in the midst of a governing crisis. The president of the United States is making up stories, repeatedly making false claims and attacking other public officials. Yet there's been little reporting connecting these incidents. What makes this lack of attention even more ironic is that it was just under three months ago at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that Axios reporter Alex Thompson was given the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence, in recognition of his 'aggressive reporting on President Biden' that 'revealed the President's cognitive decline was impacting his ability to do his job, information the White House tried to conceal.' Thompson, along with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, wrote a bestselling book that further explored the president's alleged decline and the White House's attempt to conceal his impairment. In receiving this honor, Thompson upbraided himself and his fellow reporters for dropping the ball on the Biden story. 'President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception. But being truth-tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.' Yet, right now, as we speak, the president of the United States is showing substantial, arguably greater public evidence of possible cognitive decline. Trump at times is unaware of what is happening inside his administration, can seem clueless about major policy events, and doesn't always appear to understand the very legislation that he is promoting. One can certainly debate the extent to which Biden was truly experiencing cognitive decline. But if reporters are going to argue that the media dropped the ball in not giving that story greater coverage, then how does one explain not even talking about what is happening right now? To quote Thompson, where are the truth-tellers about the current occupant of the White House? This article was originally published on
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Claims Uncle Taught the Unabomber, No Evidence to Support Allegation
President Donald Trump claimed his late uncle, John Trump, taught Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber, while at MIT.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
White House stonewalls when pressed to explain Trump's implausible Unabomber story
The White House stonewalled Thursday when pressed for an explanation as to why President Donald Trump told a group of business leaders an implausible tale about his late uncle, a noted MIT professor, once teaching Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. The Independent asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about the president's bizarre anecdote during a routine press briefing, two days after Trump insisted that Kaczynski, who earned a bachelor's degree at Harvard and a master's and a PhD at the University of Michigan before going on his deadly terror spree, had been a student of his famous uncle. Leavitt attempted to deflect by claiming surprise that The Independent would be interested in the matter despite having received a query about the president's claims by email within minutes of him making the remarks in question on Tuesday. She proceeded to cite the late Dr. Trump's history at MIT and called the late physicist — a pioneer in cancer research who was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 — a 'very intelligent professor.' 'The President's very proud of his family. In fact, I have a or the President has a letter from his uncle on the MIT letterhead that sits in the Oval Office dining room. Maybe we'll let you see it sometime,' she added. Leavitt did not attempt to explain how John Trump — a physicist and electrical engineer — could have taught Kaczynski at MIT when the future terrorist had been enrolled at Harvard as a mathematics student. The story, as told by Trump, raised eyebrows because it is highly unlikely that any of what he said about his uncle and the notorious murderer was true. Not only did Kaczynski — whose undergraduate degree was from Harvard — never attend MIT, but even if the president's uncle had crossed paths with the future terrorist, he could not have known that Kaczynski had been responsible for 16 bomb attacks between 1978 and 1995. '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 at carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Tuesday, before adding that he'd once discussed the infamous bomber with his father's brother. Before being recognized as the Unabomber, Kaczynski earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1962, having entered at the age of 16, and Master's and Doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan by 1967. Kaczynski taught as an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, until 1969, before making a deliberate shift away from academic life and mainstream society, living in a remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana. He began delivering handmade explosives to university and airline executives in the late 1970s, killing three and injuring 23 as part of a campaign aimed at collapsing modern society. The murderous recluse was one of the country's most wanted fugitives until 1996, when his brother David Kaczynski, turned him in to the FBI after reading the now-infamous manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, after The Washington Post published it at the recommendation of then-Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh. He pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges and was sentenced to life in federal prison in 1998. He hanged himself in a Colorado prison cell in June 2023, three months after he stopped treatment for a cancer diagnosis he'd received two years earlier. Kaczynski's manifesto makes no mention of Prof. Trump, MIT, or any figures associated with that institution, and his autobiography and prison interviews — which contain detailed recollections of his education and professors — do not include any references to Trump's uncle or his time at MIT.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
White House fails to clear up Trump's Unabomber story
The White House has failed to provide more details on Donald Trump 's claim that his uncle taught the domestic terrorist and mathematician known as the Unabomber. The president had insisted that Dr John Trump, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had once taught a 'seriously good' student named Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski, and recalled having a conversation with his uncle about him. When told it would have been impossible for Dr Trump to have ever discussed the Unabomber with the now-president, Ms Leavitt told White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg on Thursday (17 July): "I'm a little bit surprised you would ask such a question. "The president's uncle did in fact teach at MIT. He was a very intelligent professor. The president's very proud of his family."
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fact check: Trump tells fictional story about his uncle and the Unabomber
President Donald Trump likes to boast about the brilliance of his late uncle John Trump, who spent decades as a professor of electrical engineering at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And when speaking about all manner of subjects, the president likes to make up stories filled with dramatic but fictional details. On Tuesday, Trump conjured an especially odd imaginary tale – that linked his uncle with the late terrorist Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Trump was speaking at a Pennsylvania event about energy and innovation when he said he had to 'brag just for a second' about his uncle's intelligence. After wrongly saying his uncle was 'the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT' (he was one of the longest-serving but not the very longest) and wrongly saying his uncle's three university degrees were 'in nuclear, chemical, and math' (two were in electrical engineering and one was in physics), the president claimed, 'Kaczynski was one of his students.' He went on to tell a story about having asked his uncle about what Kaczynski was like. ''I said, 'What kind of a student was he, Uncle John?' Dr. John Trump. I said, 'What kind of a student?' And 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.' For two big reasons, this story could not possibly be accurate. First, the president's uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness. There is no apparent reason that Donald Trump would have been asking anyone about Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier. Second, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and the University of Michigan, not MIT. An MIT spokesperson said in a Wednesday email: 'We have no enrollment record or information that Ted Kaczynski ever attended MIT.' Harvard has long allowed some students to register for classes at nearby MIT, but media outlets and MIT itself have found no sign that Kaczynski ever did that during his time at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s – much less that Kaczynski, a Harvard mathematics major, studied under Trump, the MIT professor of electrical engineering. MIT reported on its website in 1996 that Kaczynski's high school guidance counselor said Kaczynski had been offered admission to MIT in the 1950s but had chosen Harvard instead. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president's tale. What the president could have accurately said is that his uncle was an esteemed MIT professor. The MIT spokesperson said Wednesday that John Trump 'remains among the longest-serving professors in our history and was a highly valued member of the MIT community throughout his tenure as a researcher, innovator, entrepreneur, teacher, and colleague.'
