Late Night Fact-Checks Trump on His Uncle and the Unabomber

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Weird Flex, Bro

At an A.I. conference in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, President Trump said his uncle, John Trump, had been the “longest-serving professor in the history of M.I.T.” and held “three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math.” Trump added that his uncle’s students had included Ted Kaczynski, who he described as being “seriously good.”

“Wow, we went from zero to Unabomber like that,” Jordan Klepper said on Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” snapping his fingers.

Klepper pointed out that while the president’s uncle had indeed been a well-known M.I.T. professor, he was not the longest-serving one, nor did he have degrees in “nuclear, chemical and math” (he had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering). He said it was also highly unlikely that he had told his nephew Donald a story about teaching the Unabomber, “because nobody knew who Kaczynski was until 1996, and Trump’s uncle died in 1985.”

“Kaczynski did not go to M.I.T. He went to Harvard. [imitating Trump] ‘Yes, but sometimes old Ted would take the crosstown bus over to M.I.T, then he would go around correcting people. He’d say, ‘I actually didn’t go to school here, you know, you don’t actually know me. I’m a figment of the imagination of your dumbest nephew.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT

“So the whole thing we just heard wasn’t just a small lie, it was like a full hallucination.” — SETH MEYERS

“Now, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe Trump just misspoke, made a slip. I mean, who among us hasn’t accidentally told people that our uncle taught the Unabomber?” — JORDAN KLEPPER

“What I’m saying is, isn’t it great that we finally have a president whose brain works perfectly?” — JORDAN KLEPPER

The Punchiest Punchlines (Snoozefest Edition)

“But the big story today is that Trump lashed out at his own supporters who are criticizing him over the Epstein files, calling them ‘weaklings who have bought into B.S. hook, line and sinker.’ Trump hasn’t been this mad at the people he loved since McDonald’s introduced salads.” — JIMMY FALLON

“No, he’s right. The Epstein saga is a total snoozefest. I mean, the most powerful man in the world is blocking information about a cabal of the rich, the famous and the royal befriending a con man, who regularly flies off on his private plane to his private island to do super-illegal sex stuff. Then the con man is arrested, people are afraid he’s going to name names, but before he can, he mysteriously dies right after being taken off of suicide watch in a federal prison during the administration of the guy who is blocking the release of the information. Boring!” — STEPHEN COLBERT