Back in June, the grifty Trump family launched its Trump-branded cell service and super-luxe Trump T1 smartphone with maximum hype and minimal details. Now, five months later, neither is anywhere to be found.

We were told that the phone would be sleek, gold, made in the United States, and somehow only $499. And you could use your Trump phone on the Trump Mobile service for a mere monthly fee of $47—yes, you know why it’s that number. All you had to do to secure one was put down a $100 deposit—because who wouldn’t want to do that?

NBC News actually tried to buy the phone, dutifully paying the $100 down payment back in August. Since then, the network has waited. And waited. And waited.

According to NBC, it received “no proactive updates” since placing the order. That seems to be just a fancy way to say that the company went radio silent after shaking down the rubes. NBC called the support linefive times between September and November, only to get the runaround about the phone’s release.

In October, the support line said that the phone would ship on Nov. 13—which has come and gone with no Trump phone of any kind, much less a sleek, gold, American-made bargain.

After NBC followed up again, a customer service representative said that the delivery would be at the “beginning of December.”Why the delay? Well, the government shutdown, according to the customer service representative.

Not really beating the accusations that the Trump Organization is inextricably connected with the presidency here. If it’s just a private project of President Donald Trump’s sons, then why would it be affected by the government shutdown?

The details of this excellent—yet somehow nonexistent—phone keep changing. References to the phone being made in the United States are no longer anywhere to be found on the Trump Mobile website. Now, it’s going to be “brought to life right here in the USA. With American hands behind every device” and with an “American-proud design.”

The phone itself is also in a state of flux. The original offering looked like a gold-plated iPhone, but when Trump Mobile started taking preorders in August, it changed to looked like a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, photoshopped with the T1 logo and an American flag. The phone also now appears to be in a Spigen case—because they literally forgot to remove the Spigen logo.

The dimensions of the phone also seem to have changed between June and August. In June, the phone had a 6.78-inch screen. But by August, it changed to a 6.25-inch screen.

The Trump Mobile T1 smartphone as depicted on Trump Mobile websiteScreenshot from trumpmobile.com

But surely Trump Mobile is going gangbusters, right? Even if you can’t show your patriotism with an ugly Trump-branded phone, you can at least prove you’re a real American by using Trump Mobile cell service, right?

Wrong.

First of all, it’s not actually Trump Mobile’s network. It’s just a licensing deal, with the Trump family slapping its name on Liberty Mobile Wireless, which operates a mobile virtual network operator on the T-Mobile network. An MVNO is a carrier that buys bandwidth on large networks like Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T. So if you’re using Trump Mobile, you’re actually just using Liberty Mobile, which is actually just operating on T-Mobile.

And good luck finding out if Trump Mobile actually exists. News reports touting its existence are all from June, when the Trump sons first made their launch. Since then, the only development seems to have been the company deleting its coverage map because it failed to label the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America.”

Definitely focusing on what matters to bring this thing to market.

The Trump phone will join Trump University and the Trump video phone as a way to steal from MAGA’s most loyal suckers. It was bad enough when Trump did this as a private citizen—but it’s extremely gross watching him get away with it as president.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos