(Dobbs) "There's Very Little Difference Between A Madman And A Genius."

Is Trump's mind descending from abnormal to aberrant?

So now Donald Trump claims a connection to the Unabomber. Who knew? Well, apparently Trump, to hear him tell it.

During a reportedly rambling monologue at an A.I. conference Tuesday in Pittsburgh— although lately, by all accounts, the adjective “reportedly” is redundant because he rambles as a rule— Donald Trump said he was going to “brag just for a second” about his late Uncle John, a longtime professor at MIT. “Kaczynski,” Trump said— the Unabomber’s name was Ted Kaczynski— “was one of his students.”

A quick clarification: No He Wasn’t. Kaczynski went to Harvard and the University of Michigan, not MIT. Just to confirm, a spokesman at MIT said in an email, “We have no enrollment record or information that Ted Kaczynski ever attended MIT.”

You’d think the president would have better things to brag about. You’d think I would have better things to write about.

But no. This story’s worth telling because sometimes small pictures reveal more than the big picture ever does. What some small pictures reveal right now is a mind that is descending from abnormal to aberrant.

The president made up all kinds of stuff during his offhand remarks, like claiming that his uncle had been “the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT” (he hadn’t). And like claiming that his uncle had “three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math” (he didn’t). Uncle John Trump had a degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic, now part of NYU, in electrical engineering, a Masters from Columbia in physics, then a PhD from MIT in electrical engineering.

Either the president’s imagination just ran wild or his memory kicked all the way off. There’s a third explanation, but since he’s the most powerful man on earth with the biggest nuclear arsenal on earth, I don’t even want to go there.

The oddest fabrication came when the president talked about a conversation he says he had with his uncle about the Unabomber— which he probably never had since they probably never met. But put that aside for a moment and just think about Trump’s tall tale, in his own words: “‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? What kind of student?’ He said, 'Seriously? Good’.” It makes for an enlightening anecdote, except here’s the catch: nobody ever heard of Ted Kaczynski until the murderous savagery of his mailed bombs was revealed by his brother in 1996. Trump’s Uncle John died in 1985.

Talk about “fake news!!!”

On The Daily Show Wednesday night, comedian Jordan Klepper captured the absurdity of everything Trump talked about. “Maybe Trump just misspoke, made a slip. I mean, who among us hasn’t accidentally told people that our uncle taught the Unabomber?”

But the Unabomber concoction was Tuesday, and Donald Trump’s mind wasn’t finished playing evil tricks on him.

Wednesday, back in the safe confines of the Oval Office, the president forgot who named Jerome Powell to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. “He’s a terrible Fed chair,” Trump told reporters, “I was surprised he was appointed.” He went on to blame Joe Biden for giving the position to Powell: “I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him.”

But here’s where that falls apart: Biden’s not the guy who named Powell to the job. Trump is. He said when he nominated the new Fed chair in 2017, "I am confident that Jay has the wisdom and leadership to guide our economy through any challenges that our great economy may face.”

He’s free to change his tune, but he’s not free to change history. President Biden re-upped Jerome Powell when his first term at the Federal Reserve ended in 2022, but Trump’s the one who hired him in the first place and Trump’s the one who kept him on when he regained the White House early this year. You might forget who you appointed to serve as ambassador to Mali, but you don’t forget who you appointed to run the Fed.

The newspaper The Independent had fun with this one, running the headline, “‘Surprised’ Trump appears to forget he appointed Powell as Fed chair before blaming Biden for keeping him on.”

But MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell wasn’t finding it so funny when he put up his post about all this on X: “Dementia? And yes let’s once again imagine the reaction not just from Fox but the entire DC media if Biden said this.”

He’s right. If Joe Biden’s rambling ruminations had been so wide of the mark, the Republican Party, the media, and of course Donald Trump, would have eaten him for lunch.

Trump is 79 now. In January he became the oldest president ever to be inaugurated. Now, after telling campaign crowds that Biden “doesn’t even know he’s alive,” can we ask the same about Trump? It’s hard to know. Either he’s nerve-rackingly uncoupled from reality, or ridiculously dishonest.

For about eight years, between reporting for two television networks, I was a radio talk show host in Denver. Like anyone who talks for hours and hours, publicly uttering tens of thousands of words every day, I cut public figures some slack for committing some slip-ups. It’s easy to confuse Cleveland for Cincinnati. When the mind is racing ahead of the lips, such slip-ups are inevitable. But these things from the lips of Donald Trump aren’t slip-ups. Not when it comes to creating a story about the Unabomber out of whole cloth. Not when it comes to forgetting that he appointed the leader of the most important monetary institution in the country.

When the president was telling his story at the A.I. conference about his uncle and the Unabomber, he unpeeled more of himself than he might have liked. “Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There's very little difference between a madman and a genius.”

Donald Trump is not a genius.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net