A grift? From Trump? How could we possibly have gotten here?

Nearly 600,000 Trump supporters paid £74 ($100) each towards a gold smartphone that, nearly a year on, does not exist.

The Trump Mobile T1 phone was announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung, retailing at £370 ($499) and promising a ‘Made in the USA’ build.

An estimated 590,000 buyers paid a £74 ($100) deposit to secure one, collectively handing the venture roughly £43.7 million ($59 million). As of May 2026, not a single confirmed customer has received the device. Now, a fresh wave of anger is spreading across MAGA forums after buyers received communication making clear that their money is, for all practical purposes, gone.

    • Steve@communick.news
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      2 days ago

      What’ll be hilarious, is when they file a class action suit to get their money back. That’ll be gloriously delicious

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        2 days ago

        So, $5 per litigant after legal fees, assuming the DOJ doesn’t step in and claim to be the defendant.

        • tal@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          27
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          My impression is that Trump mostly just licenses his name to these ventures for a payment and isn’t affiliated with them otherwise. I don’t think that he likely cares much what happens to the phone buyers or sellers. He’s made his money either way.

          EDIT: Yeah:

          https://www.trump.com/lifestyle/trump-mobile

          Trump Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals. T1 Mobile LLC uses the Trump name and trademark pursuant to the terms of a limited license agreement which may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.

          It’s some third-party fly-by-night organization doing the actual deal.

  • manxu@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    2 days ago

    American population: about 400 million. Cost of the war in Iran: about 20 billion per day. 20 billion divided by 400 million: about 50 dollars a day.

    Every single person in America spent the equivalent of this Trump phone in ten days of this war that has lasted more than six times as long. How the man is still America’s President, I don’t know. But the saga of the $500 cult vaporphone sure explains a lot.

    • ɔiƚoxɘup@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Being in a panopticon prison state has a way of dissuading people from doing the needful.

      Obviously there’s more nuance than that, but…

      Maybe to get an idea of what’s going on, look at the timeline at https://maps.deflock.org/timeline

      I don’t have the spoons for more explanations right now, but we know how badly we’re getting fleeced.

      • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        It’s bad, but also… it’s extremely complicated. China has a surveillance state. The EU, UK, and US are all flirting with surveillance state technology. You have companies like Palantir, Pegasus, Flock, … promoting their products to governments like magic hat solutions to issues such as terrorism. You have data aggregation companies selling private data to the 3 letter agencies. You have cops willingly using these networks because it makes their job slightly more effortless. You have Trump And Co with their own motives, who would love to find any possible leverage over their perceived enemies. You have AI companies riding the bull of the US economy, all desperately looking for catchy use cases. You have this idea of an AI arms race.

        Whatever world we walk into, it’s not looking pretty. It’s looking like we might actually develop something which is going to be damn near impossible to turn off.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    2 days ago

    a revised terms of service published on 6 April 2026. The updated document states explicitly that paying a deposit ‘does not constitute a completed purchase and does not create a binding legal contract.’ The payment is described as ‘a conditional opportunity to buy the device if Trump Mobile eventually chooses to sell it,’ with the company retaining all control over whether a phone is produced at all.

    screenshot of change in terms, but what I’d love to see is a copy of the email they’ve been getting.

    • tal@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      2 days ago

      Frankly, being taken for $100 on a phone is probably a lot better than putting your life savings into one of Trump’s memecoins or Truth Social, which some people did.